LGBTQIA+ History Month 2023: Louise Pearce (1885 – 1959)
To celebrate LGBTQIA+ History Month 2023, we are showcasing profiles for some of the incredible microbiologists and virologists from history who were part of the LGBTQIA+ community. It is important for this community to claim their past, celebrate their present and create their future.
Louise Pearce was an American pathologist. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, and her medical degree from John Hopkin's School of Medicine. In 1913, she obtained a research position at the Rockefeller Institute – the first woman to ever do so.
African sleeping sickness is a fatal illness which has been present in Africa for thousands of years, with an epidemic between 1900 and 1906 devasting two-thirds of the population of an affected area of Uganda. By 1903, researchers had identified the diseases as being caused by the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, spread by a species of the tsetse fly, but no treatments had been found. Pearce studied animal models of the disease and found that the disease effected the central nervous system in rabbits, which was the most comparable model to humans. Furthermore, after testing a series of arsenic-based compounds as potential treatments, they found that one drug, tryparsamide, was seemingly the most effective.
Pearce travelled to Belgian Congo in 1920 to test the treatment on a wide scale. She worked alongside a local hospital and laboratory to establish testing procedures to determine the effectiveness and safety of the drug. The program found that nearly all early stage patients could be treated, and those in the later stages were often saved too. The drug had an 80% success rate and became the standard treatment for several years, saving up to two million people. She was awarded the Belgian Royal Order of the Lion for this work.
As well as her work on sleeping sickness, Pearce also studied syphilis and cancer in rabbits. Since syphilis also affects the central nervous system, Pearce and her research partner Dr. Wade Hampton Brown studied the efficacy of tryparsamide as a treatment for syphilis. As a result, tryparsamide was made a standard treatment until the introduction of penicillin. The pair also discovered the first transplantable tumour in rabbits, coined the Pearce-Brown tumour, which was studied in cancer laboratories worldwide.
In her personal life, Pearce was a member of Heterodoxy. She lived with fellow physician Sara Josephine Baker and her partner Ida Alexa Ross Wylie, and Pearce is buried alongside Wylie in New Jersey. Many today believe the three were most likely in a polyamorous relationship but, similarly to Baker, Pearce never publicly came out as lesbian. This is unsurprising, given the time period during which she lived and societal attitudes towards LGBTQ+ identities, and shows why it is so important to ensure the achievements and contributions of LGBTQ+ scientists throughout history are not erased.
Written by Ruth Abramson.