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He was in charge of Montana’s RMSF work between 1917–1921, which were years when the U.S. Public Health Service was not involved in this work. When the Public Health Service and the State of Montana began working together again on RMSF, at Montana’s request, at the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory, Cooley was there as head entomologist. In 1931, he became a Public Health Service employee instead of a Montana state employee, and also retired from his position at Montana State University. In 1936, he received an honorary doctorate from Montana State College, receiving the “Dr.” title that he had earned several times over during his career. He stayed at Rocky Mountain Laboratories until he retired in 1946.

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The relationship between Parker, who worked for the State of Montana, and Dr. Roscoe Spencer, who was the Public Health Service officer in charge of the laboratory, was an arrangement that worked despite of its awkwardness. Spencer developed the vaccine in the Hygienic Laboratory (precursor to the National Institutes of Health) in Washington, D.C., but more tests and then production of the vaccine occurred in the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory, which was run by Parker when Spencer wasn’t there. It was the production of the vaccine that led to the construction of a building especially designed for scientific work and , which replaced the schoolhouse in 1928 and remains in use today.

Parker and Spencer collaborated on studies of other diseases as well. Tularemia and its transmission were another of Parker’s passions, whether it was transmitted by ticks, deer flies, or the pathogen Pasteurella tularensis which he found in ground water. He also studied Q fever, a bacterial infection that can cause heart valve problems, and which is often transmitted by breathing in contaminated air around infected animals such as livestock. Plague was first reported in Montana under Parker.

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