Trending: Google Doodle honours Lucy Wills
Google Doodle is honoring pioneering English scientist Lucy Wills for her work in discovering folic acid as an important supplement for pregnant women to tackle prenatal anemia.
This is 2019 and even now, women’s gynecological health is a very less understood area with very little funds being directed towards this area for research as compared to other medical areas. Google Doodle is honoring English hematologist Lucy Wills on her 131st birth anniversary — a woman who was the pioneer in tackling prenatal anemia during pregnancy. Born on this day in 1888, Wills is the prime reason why pregnant women around the world now take folic acid supplements.
Her incredible discovery was later found to help not just pregnant mothers but also the child by helping in their brain development.
Here are 10 facts on the incredible British scientist who changed the face of pregnancy healthcare, Lucy Wills and how she discovered Folic acid:
1. Lucy Wills was among the very first women doing medical research in England. In 1911, she got a double honors degree in botany and geology from Cambridge University. She studied in three major institutions – the Cheltenham College for Young Ladies; Cambridge University’s Newnham College; and the London School of Medicine for Women, the first school in Britain to train female doctors.
2. Lucy did some voluntary work as a nurse for a few weeks in a Cape Town hospital in South Africa during World War 1.
3. In 1920, Lucy got a medical degree from London and by the late 1920s, she developed an interest in haematology or the study of red blood cells.
4. In the 1920s and 1930s, she traveled to India to study pregnant textile workers who showed pernicious anemia (low number of red blood cells) during pregnancy which can cause fatigue, potential heart problems, and diarrhea — it can be fatal.
5. She studied whether the cause of the anaemia was some bacteria or virus, but it wasn’t. She later discovered wealthier women did not show such symptoms often and garnered that the cause might be related to nutrition.
6. Lucy Wills explored this angle with her studies on rats and then on monkeys, and figured out that the two things which could help with the anemia were liver supplements and bread spread called Marmite which is rich in Vitamin B and made from brewer’s yeast (leftover yeast after being used to make alcohol).
7. Wills went on to feed pregnant women with Marmite and the results were incredible — the Asia-Pacific Journal reported that the women showed increased red cell count within just the fourth day and their appetites returned as well.
8. Her results were published in a 1931 edition of the British Medical Journal. She admitted she didn’t exactly know what in the Marmite or liver supplements caused the improvement in the pregnant women but knew Marmite could be used as a cheap supplement during pregnancy.
The secret ingredient or folate, the naturally occurring form of folic acid that Lucy failed to identify, was later named as ‘the Wills Factor’ till folic acid was discovered in 1941 after being isolated from spinach.
9. Lucy also carried out a placebo trial involving routine iron supplementation in pregnant women during World War 2 amidst the bombing and other devastations caused by the war.
10. Lucy Wills died on April 16, 1964 after many years of travel around the world to record the impact of nutrition on pregnancy health, especially in South Africa and Fiji. She had never married.
