Hideyo Noguchi - Impact

Impact

Noguchi is still famous for his pioneering work, although later research was not able to reproduce many of his claims including having discovered the causes of polio, rabies, syphilis, trachoma, and yellow fever. In part, this was due to the early stage of research on such diseases, as virology and bacteriology were not fully separated until the appearance of electron microscopes. In 1928, when Noguchi died: "the nature of any filterable virus (was)... entirely unknown and the group of virus diseases...was loosely held together by the threat of filterability of the active agents. To be fair, one should accept that he conducted his research on yellow fever at a period in which virology itself was not defined and delienated." Noguchi's most famous contribution is his identification of the causative agent of syphillis (the bacteria Treponema pallidimn) in the brain tissues of patients suffering from partial paralysis due to meningoencephalitis. Other lasting contributions include the use of snake venom in serums, the identification of the leishmaniasis pathogen and of Carrion's disease with Oroya fever. Cricitisms of his work are that: His finding that Noguchia granulosis causes trachoma was questioned within a year of his death, and overturned shortly thereafter. His identification of the rabies pathogen was wrong, because the medium he invented to cultivate bacteria was seriously prone to contamination. Overall, Noguchi's contribution should be evaluated by the methods and laboratories available then.