Sir William Boog Leishman

Bacteriologist, born in Glasgow, W Scotland, UK. He became professor of pathology in the Army Medical College, and director-general of the Army Medical Service (1923). He discovered an effective vaccine for inoculation against typhoid, and was the first to discover the parasite that causes kala-azar, a form of the disease leishmaniasis, which is named after him.

In 1900 he was made Assistant Professor of Pathology in the Army Medical School, and described a method of staining blood for malaria and other parasites -- a modification and simplification of the existing Romanowsky method using a compound of Methylene Blue and eosin, which became known as Leishman's stain.

In 1901, while examining pathologic specimens of a spleen from a patient who had died of kala azar he observed oval bodies and published his account of them in 1903. Charles Donovan of the Indian Medical Serrvice independently found such bodies in other kala azar patients, and they are now known as Leishman-Donovan bodies, and recognized as the protozoan which causes kala azar, Leishmania donovani.

Leishman also helped elucidate the life cycle of Spirochaeta duttoni, which causes African tick fever, and, with Almroth Wright, helped develop an effective anti-typhoid inoculation.