Martyrs To Science

Ever since Pasteur discovered that some microbes are a menace, war against the deadly ones has been waged in laboratories all over the world.

In hospitals, in medical foundations like the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and in hygienic laboratories like those of the United States Public Health Service and of the Canadian Dominion Health Department -- doctors, bacteriologists, researchers, and laboratory assistants are constantly fighting the microbes of many diseases.

Sometimes these microbes rise up against those waging war on them, injuring or even killing them. Many of their victims are pioneers of knowledge, who, though they realize the dangers attached to exploration in any field, are not afraid to risk their lives for their chosen work.

There's a certain moral courage of those who would purposely infect themselves with such illnesses. I'm thinking especially about those who purposely infected themselves with yellow fever in the effort to conquer this plague that still troubles mankind today even though there were high hopes to eradicate it from earth.

Many others also have exposed themselves to harmful bacteria in attempts to conquer dreaded diseases. One could fill a book with such stories of their heroism.

In the Rocky Mountains there is a peculair disease known as Spotted fever. It is carried by the wood tick, an insect which sucks the blood of man and beast. The wood tick becomes a disease carrier after sucking the blood of an infected animal and so gives the disease to its next victim.

Each spring, when ticks awoke from their winter sleep, spotted fever used to take its toll of lives, but its ravages have been now considerably reduced by the painstaking care and work of several brave doctors of yesterday.

One of these, Thomas B. McClintic, limited his research to a certain locality in the Rocky Mountains where the infection was most serious. He decided that the best course was to eliminate the wood tick.

Accordingly, all domestic animals were bathed in an arsenic solution which poisoned the insects.

Then, all wild animals likely to be tick ridden were killed. If you are like me, that seemed kind of drastic and would hopefully not be an option today.

At the same time, Dr. McClintic intensively studied the disease in his laboratory. In the summer of 1912, while experimenting with serums for curing or preventing it, be became infected with the disease and, after a brief illness died. I'm thinking the animals that he killed in the name of medicine would probably tell him that "karma" will get you in the end.

However, he succeded in checking spotted fever temporarily at least, for in that year, his was the only death in the region.

It sprang up again, however, despite all the efforts that were directed against it.

Ten years later, the United States Public Health Service sent Dr. Roscoe Spencer to the infected region.

There he established a laboratory and with several of his assistants began to collect wood ticks and to experiment on guinea pigs. At first, his experiments failed. Tragically, some of the insects escaped and overran the laboratory. Two of his assistants, William Gettinger and George Cowan, contracted the disease and died.

The work went on, and in 1924 Spncer developed a vaccine which protected guinea pigs from the disease. Now the question was, would it also protect man?

Without knowing what the results would be, Spencer injected some of this vaccine into his own arm. He continued to work with his deadly ticks with no ill effects and so proved the value of the vaccine.

Before long it was being used extensively and successfully for the prevention of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

There is another illness which has taken the life of more than one scientist in the battle to wipe it out. This is meningitis disease causes inflammation of the membranes of the spinal cord and brain. Important work started early on to develop a serum to fight it.

Not the least worthy of that a bacteriologist, Ana Pabst, who devoted her medical studies mainly to to meningitis.

One day, while injecting serum into a laboratory animal, it moved suddenly and some of the serum spurted into the bacteriologist's eye.

The eye was immediately washed, but shortly afterward Miss Pabst showed the signs of meningitis. Four days later, on Christmas night, she died -- a heroine of peace engaged in promoting the welfare of humanity.

Not everyone has heard of the dreaded disease called Malta fever. This is also known as "Undulant fever," because it strikes it victims in waves. Formerly it was believed that goats were the only carriers of the disease, but Alice Evans, a bacteriologist, discovered that cows and pigs also carry it.

She found a likeness between the Malta fever germ and the Bang germ which causes a disease in cattle and swine.

What is more important, is that she suggested that the Bang germ causes Malta fever in human beings.

Miss Evans became so engrossed in her research that she neglected her own health until she discovered that she had contracted Malta fever.

Forced to give up her work, she suffered for seven years. She was partly rewarded for her good services by being elected president of the American Society of Bacteriologists, but her greatest satisfaction came from the knowledge that her discoveries were of great value to mankind.

Now that we know that cow's milk, which has been heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit is completely free from microbes causing Malta Fever.

Dr. Edward Francis, of the United States Public Health Service, continued the research and proved beyong a doubt that the Bang germ causes this fever. Before he finished his work, however, he himself went through a siege of the disease.

This was not his first experience in contracting an illness on which he was working. In 1913 he suffered from Dengue fever, a disease carried by mosquitoes. In 1919 he suffered from Tularemia, which attacked twenty-four Public Health Service workers who worked on it. In 1930, he got Parrot fever.

Each time he recovered, ready to fight another dangerous disease. Early in 1930 Parrot fever, or psittacosis as it is scientifically called, spread in America. Up to that time very little was known about this strange disease caught from parrots, but now several doctors in the United States Public Health Service began to study it.

What happened then, shows the tremendous risk run by those men and women who fight death. Four doctors, including Francis, two assistants, three attendants and tow laborers fell ill with Parrot fever. One of the attendants, Harry Bernard Anderson, died.

Foremost in the battle was Dr. George W. McCoy, a co-worker of Dr. Francis and director of the National Institute of Health. McCoy was very nearly a martyr to Typhoid fever in 1907 and in the same year contracted Dengue fever. Later, he suffered from Tularemia. Now, he was again exposing himself to a deadly infection, but this time he came through unscathed.

 The work done by these doctors formed the basis for further study of the disease and we cannot help admire the courage and selflessness they showed in starting the fight against another of mankind's ills.  The risks still exists today for those in this field of medicine and research.