Leishmaniasis historical perspective

History
Description of conspicuous lesions similar to cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) has been discovered on tablets from King Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BCE, some of which may have been derived from even earlier texts from 1500 to 2500 BCE. Arab physicians including Avicenna in the 10th century gave detailed description of what was called Balkh sore. In 1756, Alexander Russell, after examining a Turkish patient, gave one of the most detailed clinical description of the disease. Physicians in the Indian Subcontinent would describe it as Kala-azar (pronounced kālā āzār, the Urdu, Hindi and Hindustani phrase for black fever, kālā meaning black and āzār meaning fever or disease). As for the new world, evidence of cutaneous form of the disease was found in Ecuador and Peru in pre-Inca potteries depicting skin lesions and deformed faces dating back to the first century CE. 15th and 16th century texts from Inca period and from spanish colonials mention "valley sickness", "Andean sickness" or "white leprosy" which are likely to be CL.

Who first discovered the organism is somewhat disputed. It is possible that Surgeon major David D Cunnigham of British Indian army saw it first in 1885 without being able to relate it to the disease. In 1901,William Boog Leishman identified certain organisms in smears taken from the spleen of a patient who had died from "dum-dum fever" (Dhum dhum is an area close to Calcutta) and in 1903 Captain Charles Donovan (1863-1951) described them as being new organism. Eventually Ronald Ross established the link with the disease and named the organism Leishmania donovani.