In 1901, William Boog Leishman identified certain organisms in smears taken from the spleen of a patient who had died from "dum-dum fever" (Dum Dum is an area close to Calcutta) and proposed them to be trypanosomes, found for the first time in India. A few months later, Captain Charles Donovan (1863–1951) confirmed the finding of what became known as Leishman-Donovan bodies in smears taken from people in Madras in southern India. But it was Ronald Ross who proposed that Leishman-Donovan bodies were the intracellular stages of a new parasite, which he named Leishmania donovani. The link with the disease kala-azar was first suggested by Charles Donovan, and was conclusively demonstrated by Charles Bentleys discovery of L. donovani in patients with kala-azar. Transmission by the sandfly was hypothesized by Lionel Napier and Ernest Struthers at the School of Tropical Medicine at Calcutta and later proven by his colleagues. The disease became a major problem for Allied troops fighting in Sicily during the Second World War; research by Leonard Goodwin then showed pentostam was an effective treatment. Society and culture
The Institute for OneWorld Health has reintroduced the drug paromomycin for treatment of leishmaniasis, results with which led to its approval as an orphan drug. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative is also actively facilitating the search for novel therapeutics. A treatment with paromomycin will cost about US$10. The drug had originally been identified in the 1960s, but had been abandoned because it would not be profitable, as the disease mostly affects poor people.
When heated above 680 °C, zinc sulfate decomposes into sulfur dioxide gas and zinc oxide fume, both of which are hazardous. Minerals
As a mineral, ZnSO4•7H2O is known as goslarite. Zinc sulfate occurs as several other minor minerals, such as zincmelanterite, (Zn,Cu,Fe)SO4·7H2O (structurally different from goslarite). Lower hydrates of zinc sulfate are rarely found in nature: (Zn,Fe)SO4·6H2O (bianchite), (Zn,Mg)SO4·4H2O (boyleite), and (Zn,Mn)SO4·H2O (gunningite). == References ==