Of all the problems which were open to me for study, typhus was the most urgent and the most unexplored. We knew nothing of the way in which contagion spread.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My first attempts to transmit typhus to laboratory animals, including the smaller species of monkeys, had failed, as had those of my predecessors, for reasons which I can easily supply today.
I finally demonstrated that typhus infection is not hereditary in the louse.
I was less successful in my attempts to effect preventive vaccination against typhus by using the virus and in trying to produce large quantities of serum using large animals.
I think that the discoveries of antibiotics and vaccines have contributed to the improvement of the quality of life, making it possible to prevent contagious diseases.
The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.
Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.
Most of the doctors in the Tunisian administration, especially those in country districts, contracted typhus and approximately one third of them died of it.
It did not seem likely that I was destined to undertake research on typhus.
The fact that I was fortunate enough to escape contagion, in spite of frequent, sometimes daily contacts with the disease, was because I soon guessed how it spread.