The Great Influenza by John M. Barry

Author:John M. Barry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 1101200979
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2004-09-21T10:00:00+00:00

The report had consequences. Park’s laboratory began the struggle to produce an antiserum and vaccine to Pfeiffer’s bacillus. Soon they were culturing liters and liters of the bacteria, transporting it north, and injecting it into the horses on the Health Department’s 175-acre farm sixty-five miles north of the city.

But the only way to know for certain that B. influenzae caused the disease was to follow Koch’s postulates: isolate the pathogen, use it to recreate the disease in an experimental animal, and then re-isolate the pathogen from the animal. The bacillus did kill laboratory rats. But their symptoms did not resemble influenza.

The results, suggestive as they were, did not fully satisfy Koch’s postulates. In this case the necessary experimental animal was man.

Human experiments had begun. In Boston, Rosenau and Keegan were already trying to give the disease to volunteers from a navy brig.

None of the volunteer subjects had yet gotten sick. One of the doctors conducting the study did. In fact he died of influenza. In a scientific sense, however, his death demonstrated nothing.

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