January 12, 2018 Hello ,
Last week I told you how two scientists died in the early 20th Century, trying to find a cure for Rocky Mountain Spotted
Fever.
They would not be the last to give their lives to the fearful "black measles" as the hunt continued for a vaccine.
Fatal Fever Sleuths, Part 2 By 1920 folks in Montana's Bitterroot Valley had spent ten years trying to exterminate wood ticks which carried the most deadly strain of the
fever. They burned brushy areas where the ticks thrived, offered a bounty on gophers thought to host ticks, warned everyone to take precautions
against ticks and seek immediate aid for even the slightest tick bite.
Yet people continued to die of spotted fever, including researchers. In 1921, entomologist Ralph L.Parker and bacteriologist Roscoe R. Spencer assembled a team of researchers in Hamilton, Montana.
The state and federal governments
cooperated to fund the research. For the first time in twenty-years scientists had a decent lab to study spotted fever, even if it was in an abandoned school house.
The building had heat and good lighting, as well as adequate room for equipment and laboratory animals. The team started new studies where they ground up thousands of ticks and used them to inoculate guinea pigs.
When one batch of guinea pigs became infected with
the fever, and a separate batch remained healthy, the men knew they were on to something. The only difference between the ticks that produced immunity and those that carried the disease was that the latter had already had a blood meal on an animal.
Parker and Spencer realized that for the virus to grow and become infectious in the ticks body, and then to be passed on to a human, the tick needed to
have fed on fresh animal blood.
Unfortunately, before they could verify their results and formulate a vaccine, the spotted fever claimed two more field assistants working with the ticks. It may not sound like a brave adventure to work dissecting and testing ticks in a laboratory. But I'd call Edwin Gettinger a hero, losing his life to medical science just short of his twenty-third
birthday.
Edwin (left) was a student at Montana State Agricultural College in 1922 when he joined the research team at his "earnest request."
He fell sick after absent mindedly rubbing a pimple on his neck while working with the ticks. Edwin had a severe case, his fever
rising quickly, and soon he was delirious, imagining
himself working in the lab. Raving and
incoherent, he died within a few days.
It was a race now, to develop the vaccine before the dreaded disease cut down anyone else on the team. Spencer wanted to test the vaccine on himself. Parker argued they didn’t have enough
evidence.
"You ought to wait till we've tried it out on monkeys,” Parker reportedly told Spencer. “There's too much difference between man and a guinea pig."
"We haven't any place for monkeys here - that means next winter before I can try them,” replied Spencer. “Besides, I don't believe it's any more risky than working with the stuff
we've been handling."
The inoculation did not harm Spencer, but Parker and the rest of the staff remained wary. More tests were needed and there was good reason for caution. Spencer’s survival did not prove the vaccine would be safe for
everyone.
George Henry Cowan (right) assisted by making field maps, trapping animals, and collecting ticks from them and different local areas. In the fall of 1924, he was the next get sick.
Cowan is believed to have caught the fever
from handling infected material, for he had no tick bites. As he grew sicker, his doctor administered some of Spencer's vaccine in hopes it might save him, but Cowan became the fourth man to die in scientific battle against spotted fever.
But Spencer was closing in on the goal. The following winter he tested the
vaccine on monkeys and it proved effective.
In the spring of 1925 inoculations began in the Bitterroot Valley, where spotted fever had been almost a sure death sentence, with mortality ranging from eighty to
ninety percent. The vaccine was greeted with enthusiasm throughout the western states. Below, people line up at a school in Darby, Montana for free shots of the vaccine. LeRoy Kerlee, a Bitterroot Valley native and student volunteer at the laboratory got his vaccination. Nevertheless, he came down with the fever in February 1928. It's possible he became
infected through a skin abrasion or by rubbing his eye with a contaminated finger.
Four days after his symptoms started, he felt well, got up from bed and shaved. Parker believed antibodies produced by the vaccine were fighting the infection in Kerlee's body.
But that afternoon the
young man's temperature shot up to 104° F. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and a week later he died.
Kerlee's death caused some in the community to believe the vaccine could not be trusted. But Spencer's investigation showed LeRoy Kerlee had not received the proper dosage. Kerlee's brother, not wanting to let the
disease win, applied for a job at the lab before LeRoy's body was in the ground.
Between 1928 and 1940 half a million people in the Rocky Mountain region were vaccinated. Of these, only 61 developed spotted fever and only three died.
Five men had paid the ultimate price, their work helping save an uncountable number of lives.
So Why is Spotted Fever
Still a Killer Today? Two years ago, Jennifer Velasquez of San Diego, CA nearly died of spotted fever after visiting a pumpkin patch where she believes she was bitten by a
tick.
Due to prompt medical attention and a course of antibiotics, she recovered. Here's the warning she posted on Facebook.
A toddler in Indiana wasn’t so lucky.
Kenley Ratliff got sick
last July after going camping. Within five days an
infection had taken over her body and doctors could not save her.
Not until after her death was the diagnosis confirmed: Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Her
parents did not know she'd been bitten by a tick.
No laboratory test has been developed that can rapidly identify Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Early symptoms of spotted fever can be mistaken for a number of less serious illness. Kenley was diagnosed with strep and by the time the spots showed up, it was too late.
Cases have ballooned into the thousands in recent years in the United States, with the preponderance of cases in the southeast. Nevertheless, people have contracted the disease all across the
country, in Canada and Central and South America.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention:Early signs and symptoms are not specific to RMSF (including fever and headache). However, the disease can rapidly progress to a serious and life-threatening illness. See your health
care provider if you become ill after having been bitten by a tick or having been in the woods or in areas with high brush where ticks commonly live.
Signs and symptoms can include: - Fever
- Headache
- Rash
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Stomach
pain
- Muscle pain
- Lack of appetite
Little did I know I had a personal connection to this story
about the fight against Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever!
Thanks to my second-cousin Melinda for writing to tell me that her family had first hand experience with this dreaded disease. In the mid-1960s, her brother
Harold Sumption survived spotted fever.
He was in second or third
grade and remembers, "I was laying down on the playground when the teachers huddled around me and freaked out about the rash. The school called my mom who came and got me and ran me down to our doctor’s office. He gave me a shot in the caboose and sent me home. The neighbor lady wrapped me in a bed sheet then packed ice all around me to [get the fever down]." Harold's older sister
Becky remembers more of the story, "The neighbor lady applied her sure cure - 1/2 an onion against the sole of his foot."
If you suspect spotted fever...get the shot first. Then try the onion! Until next week... Have you read a great book? Tell me about it. Have a burning question? Let me know. If you know someone who might enjoy
my newsletter or books, please forward this e-mail. I will never spam you or sell your email address, you can unsubscribe below anytime with a single mouse click. To find out more about my books, how I help students, teacher and librarians, visit my website at www.MaryCronkFarrell.com. My best, Mary
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