Google honours heamatologist Lucy Wills who also saved many lives of pregnant women in Mumbai in 1920s

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the 131st birth anniversary of English haematologist Lucy Wills, the pioneering medical researcher whose early research in India helped identify folic acid supplementation to prevent anaemia in pregnant women and changed the face of preventive prenatal care for women.

Who was Lucy Wills?

Born on 10 May in 1888, Lucy Wills went to the Cheltenham College for Young Ladies, an independent boarding and day school for female students in science and mathematics. In 1911, Wills earned first honours in botany and geology at Cambridge University’s Newnham College. Wills travelled to India intending to investigate a severe form of anaemia causing trouble to pregnant textile workers and seminal work on macrocytic anaemia during pregnancy, which is life-threatening.

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Wills suspected that poor nutrition was the cause and discovered a nutritional factor in yeast which both prevents and cures this disorder. Later on, it came to be known as the “Wills Factor” when the health of a laboratory monkey improved after being fed the British breakfast spread Marmite made of yeast extract. Subsequently, the nutritional factor was shown to be folate, the naturally occurring form of folic acid.

Macrocytic anaemia was widespread in a severe form among poorer women with dietary deficiencies, particularly those in the textile industry. Wills observed a connection between the dietary habits of different classes of women in Mumbai and the possibility of becoming anaemic during pregnancy.

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This anaemia was called 'pernicious anaemia of pregnancy'. However, Wills was able to show that the anaemia she observed differed from the actual pernicious anaemia, as the patients did not have achlorhydria, an inability to produce gastric acid.

She was always known for her satirical sense of humour. Wills enjoyed mountain climbing, cross-country skiing and rode a bicycle to work rather than driving in a car.  Wills spent her most of her life travelling the world and researching on the health of pregnant women. She died on 26 April 1964.

(With agency inputs)