The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

Author:John M. Barry [Barry, John M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Science
ISBN: 9780143036494
Google: d7691ImvK7YC
Amazon: 0143036491
Barnesnoble: 0143036491
Goodreads: 9364576
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2004-01-02T00:00:00+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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