Studies on Epidemic Influenza: Comprising Clinical and Laboratory InvestigationsUniversity of Pittsburgh. School of Medicine
History
Studies on Epidemic Influenza: Comprising Clinical and Laboratory Investigations
University of Pittsburgh. School of Medicine
Influenza; Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919
The experiments in man lead to very surprising results. Rosenau, Keegan,
Goldberger and Lake, at Gallops Island, Boston, Mass., (1) inoculated
volunteers with pure culture of B. Pfeiffer, with secretions of the
upper air passages and with blood from typical cases of influenza.
Sixteen men, of whom 13 were supposedly non-immune, had Pfeiffer bacilli
installed into their nasal passages, and none of them developed the
disease. Secretions filtered and unfiltered also gave negative results.
Contact with well-developed early cases also failed. McCoy and Richey
(1a) conducted similar experiments in San Francisco, with negative
results. The men of the latter group had been vaccinated with a mixed
streptococcic vaccine, which may have played some part. Had the
experiments with the Pfeiffer bacillus been negative and the other
experiments positive, they would have shown that the bacillus of
Pfeiffer was not the cause of influenza; but since all attempts were
negative, it merely brought out the fact that there had been a change,
due probably to some immune factor, which seemed to have acted alike on
the Pfeiffer bacillus and all other types of virus present, and to have
made them all innocuous. These experiments still leave the cause of
influenza in question.
Those who are opposed to the Pfeiffer bacillus being the cause of
influenza in its epidemic form base their position on the points that
the common finding of the bacillus might be accounted for on the grounds
of its being a secondary rather than a primary invader; that while it is
not so common at ordinary times, it does occur with other organisms in
whooping cough and sometimes in chronic diseases of the air passages,
and that the rules of Koch have not been complied with in that the
organism has not been found in every case of the disease; that where it
has been grown in pure culture and inoculated into man and animals, it
has either produced no disease, or the lesions which followed have not
been typical of epidemic influenza. On the side of those who believe
that the Pfeiffer bacillus is the chief cause, or, at any rate, that it
is partly responsible for epidemic influenza, are the facts of its
fairly constant presence in the purulent bronchial secretion of patients
suffering from epidemic influenza; its relatively uncommon occurrence at
other times; its known pathogenicity in occasional cases of meningitis,
and in the inflammation of the bony sinuses of the head and face; the
relative immunity of nearly all common laboratory animals and the fact
that the attempts to transfer epidemic influenza from man to man failed
not only when Pfeiffer bacilli were used, but also when direct contact
and direct coughing by the patient into the face of the volunteer were
tried. The argument that many cantonment laboratories failed to find the
organisms loses weight when we find that the percentage of positives
increased where the material examined was removed directly from the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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