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The U.S. Public Health Service · Episode 20 of 34 · 49 min

Typhus: Ship Fever, Jail Fever, and the Vaccine Factory

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Typhus has killed more soldiers than combat for most of history, and it is neither typhoid nor Bolivia's so-called black typhus. The episode covers louse-borne and flea-borne forms, then the war: Herald Cox's egg-grown vaccine turned the Rocky Mountain Laboratory into a vaccine factory, and a joint Typhus Commission halted a typhus outbreak in Naples in 1943 and 1944 with mass DDT delousing.

Who's who

Where it happens

Timeline

  1. 1909Nicolle proves the body louse transmits epidemic typhus
  2. 1931-1946About 42,000 murine typhus cases in the U.S., mostly in the South
  3. 1938Cox develops egg-based method at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory
  4. December 8, 1942Executive order creates the U.S. Typhus Commission
  5. December 1943 to February 1944DDT delousing of over a million people halts the Naples epidemic

Still debated

Credit for Naples was shared among the Army, the Typhus Commission, and Allied military government, not the Public Health Service alone. The vaccine reduced severity more than spread, while delousing broke the epidemic, and DDT's wartime triumph preceded its later reckoning.

typhusddtnaplesworld war iivaccinetyphus commission
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