[1][5] Alongside her pharmacy instructor, Williams Dehn, she co-published a 10-page article, "Benzoylations in Ether Solution", in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1914.
[15] At the University of Hawaiʻi, Ball investigated the chemical makeup and active principle of Piper methysticum (kava) for her master's thesis.
Over the course of 103 years, starting in 1866 until 1969, over 8,000 patients diagnosed with leprosy were exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai on the Kalaupapa peninsula, with the expectation that they would die there.
But Western treatment developed by British physician Frederic John Moaut in 1854 was not very effective,[11] and every method of application had problems.
It was too sticky to be effectively used topically, and as an injection the oil's viscous consistency caused it to clump under the skin and form blisters rather than being absorbed.
After Ball's death, Dean undertook further trials and by 1919, a college chemistry laboratory was producing large quantities of the injectable chaulmoogra extract.
[4] A University of Hawai'i academic, Paul Wermager, in 2004, quoted a 1921 newspaper interview with Dean, in which he emphasized the importance of the work of his predecessors in the development of the extract.
[4]: 174 In 1920, a Hawaii physician reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that 78 patients had been discharged from Kalihi Hospital by the board of health examiners after treatment with injections of Ball's modified chaulmoogra oil.
[7][15][17] In Ball's Method, ethyl esters of the fatty acids found in chaulmoogra oil were prepared into a form suitable for injection and absorption into the circulation.
[16] While not curative or able to fully halt the disease's progress indefinitely, the isolated ethyl ester remained the only available, effective treatment for leprosy until sulfonamide drugs were developed in the 1940s.
The original method will allow any physician in any asylum for lepers in the world, with a little study, to isolate and use the ethyl esters of chaulmoogra fatty acids in treating his cases, while the complicated distillation in vacuo will require very delicate, and not always obtainable, apparatus.
[24] In the 1970s, Kathryn Takara and Stanley Ali, professors at the University of Hawaiʻi, found records of Ball's research and made efforts to ensure her achievement was recognized.
In the 1990s, Ali came across The Samaritans of Molokai, a 1932 book that specifically mentioned and recognized the contributions of a young chemist, later identified as Ball.
[14] It was reported that she was giving a demonstration on how to properly use a gas mask in preparation for an attack, as World War I was raging in Europe.
[29][30] In 2019, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added her name to the frieze atop its main building, along with Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie, in recognition of their contributions to science and global health research.
[35] In December 2024, after a resolution by the UH Mānoa Faculty Senate, a bust sculpture of Ball was placed in the Hamilton Library.