From the Newspapers to the Movies:
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Popular Culture
A new deadly disease, the struggle to contain it, and the race to develop a vaccine for it—Rocky Mountain spotted fever and the self-sacrifice and success of those researching it had all the elements of a good story. In the mid-1930s, that story captured Americans’ imagination in a best-selling book, a series of newspaper articles, and a popular movie. Of course, such re-imaginings of the actual events could, and did, take liberties with the truth.
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"’Boone Mountain!’ he [Endicott] was shouting. ‘Boone Mountain! By God!—I won't have him up there on Boone Mountain! I know all about that shack on Boone Mountain! It has cost the lives of the three finest bacteriologists in this country—men who deserved a better death than that of a guinea pig in that damned pest-hole! I won't have him up there, I tell you!’"
While Douglas’s book didn’t have much connection to the reality of RMSF research, he was correct about this: the real people who died doing this research deserved a better death.
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| seller for Lloyd Douglas and was reprinted into the early 1960s. This cover from the 1959 edition featured a beautiful woman superimposed on an image of an operation. No ticks!||||||||||||||
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“With the modesty of his kind, Dr. Spencer today shrugs away the drama of what he and his little band of helpers accomplished in the small school house in Montana where they had set up their laboratory. But those who know him declare his successful vaccine against the fever of the Northwest is only the first of the victories against disease that we may be able to chalk up to the credit of this G-man of science in years to come, for he is still in early middle age, and perennially active in the war against disease.”
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- (Quote: “Tick is Conquered,” Lucy Salamanca, Washington Star, March 28, 1937, page F-4.)
A transcript of the article is available.
For more on NIH during the 1930s, download “70 Acres of Science: The NIH Moves to Bethesda.” (12 MB)
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