In 1915, chemist Alice Ball developed a water-soluble, injectable form of chaulmoogra oil, which had long been used as a topical remedy for Hansen’s disease but whose viscous nature prevented effective internal administration. Previous attempts to ingest the raw oil caused severe nausea, while direct subcutaneous injections resulted in painful abscesses due to its insolubility in physiological fluids. Ball solved this therapeutic bottleneck by isolating the active chaulmoogric and hydnocarpic fatty acids from the crude oil and chemically converting them into their corresponding ethyl esters. This structural modification rendered the compound miscible in bloodstream plasma without compromising its therapeutic potency. Ball’s premature death in 1916 initially obscured her contribution when Arthur Dean, president of the college where she worked, published the method under his own name without attribution. It was not until 1922, when Ball’s former supervisor Harry Hollmann documented the historical sequence in print, that Ball’s primacy in developing the esterification process was formally restored in scientific literature.
Consider each of the three choices separately and select all that apply.
According to the passage, which of the following statements regarding Alice Ball's work on chaulmoogra oil is explicitly supported?
- Direct subcutaneous injections of the raw oil led to painful abscesses because the oil was insoluble in physiological fluids.Answer
- BConverting the active fatty acids into ethyl esters reduced the therapeutic potency of the resulting compound.
- Harry Hollmann's 1922 publication restored Ball's credit for developing the esterification process.Answer