Leishman

Leishman (more correctly Leishman) William (William Boog Leishman, 1865-1926)^, a prominent representative of British tropical medicine. The extensive scientific, pedagogical, and administrative activities of L. took place mainly in the military-sanitary department. After graduating from the university in Glasgow (1886), L. served for several years in India. From 1897 he worked in Wright's (A.Wright) laboratory, participating in his research on vaccination and vaccinotherapy. During this period, L. proposed his stain for leukocytes, which in effect was close to the Romanovsky method. L.'s stain is still widely used in England and America. Working with Wright, L. described the parasites he found in the spleen of a person who died from "dum-dum" fever (kala-azar). L. attributed these parasites, previously unknown to him and his teacher, to the group of flagellates (Flagellata). As it turned out later, parasites of this genus had been noted and more or less correctly identified before L. by other researchers, in particular by the Russian military doctor Borovsky. However, Ross, who studied this question in 1903 (under the impression of L.'s work) and isolated the causative agent of kala-azar into a special genus, gave it the name Leishmania, which has firmly entered the nomenclature (leishmanias, leishmanioses). L.'s subsequent works were devoted mainly to spirochetoses (syphilis and relapsing fever). For many years, L. was a professor of pathology at the military medical higher school, at Cambridge and Oxford universities, chairman of the Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in London, and from 1923 head of the military-sanitary administration. L's printed works are scattered in various English journals, mainly in "Lancet" and in "British medical journal".