Thomas Noguchi

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Lore & Background

Noguchi was born Seisaku Noguchi in the town of Inawashiro in Fukushima Prefecture in 1876 to an impoverished farming family. At age two, he fell into an irori and suffered burns on his left hand; with no doctor in Inawashiro, his hand remained useless, the upper joints of the fingers gone and the thumb drawn down to his wrist. His elementary school teacher Kobayashi saw his talent and, due to generous contributions from his teacher, Noguchi received surgery fifteen years after the accident from Dr. Kanae Watanabe. In 1901, he started a research position at the University of Pennsylvania earning eight dollars a month from Flexner's own pocket. Flexner left for San Francisco, leaving Noguchi for three months under Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell; Flexner returned to find he had written 250 pages on snake venom. Mitchell and Noguchi presented their findings before the National Academy of Science in Philadelphia. Mitchell said afterward, "It is thanks to the great efforts of this young man that I have been able to bring my thirty years of research to their final conclusion."

Reader's Guide

Noguchi's most notable achievement was isolating Treponema pallidum in the brain tissues of patients with general paresis and tabes dorsals, a late stage consequence of tertiary syphilis. His discovery established the conclusive link between the physical and mental manifestation of syphilis. American educator and psychiatrist John Clare Whitehorn considered it an outstanding psychiatric achievement. Later, Noguchi developed the first serum to give partial immunity to Rocky Mountain spotted fever. He also suggested the name for the genus Leptospira in 1917. However, he became increasingly erratic and inaccurate, which might have been exacerbated from contracting syphilis, progressing to neurosyphilis, discovered during his autopsy by William Alexander Young. He misidentified yellow fever as being caused by the bacteria Leptospira icterohemorrhagiae, and received scrutiny when it was later understood to be a virus. Noguchi died of yellow fever in Accra, Gold Coast during an expedition to Africa in search for its cause. Posthumously, his work on yellow fever was overturned alongside his claims of discovering the causative agent of rabies, poliomyelitis and trachoma, and his culture of syphilis could not be reproduced.

Did You Know?

• Noguchi was two years old when he fell into an irori and suffered burns that left his left hand permanently disfigured until surgery fifteen years later.
• He wrote a 250-page manuscript on snake venom while his supervisor Simon Flexner was away investigating a plague outbreak in San Francisco.
• Noguchi was nominated several times for a Nobel prize in medicine between 1913 and 1927.
• His name is attached to the spirochete Leptospira noguchii.
• In 2004, Noguchi's face was featured on the 1000 yen note.