In many ways, Dr. Roscoe R. Spencer’s career in the Public Health Service spanned two distinct periods in the Service: in the earlier period, most officers deployed several times across the U.S. to investigate outbreaks of known and unknown causes; and in the later period, they often stayed at the National Institutes of Health for most of their career. Spencer’s involvement in creating a vaccine for Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) shares elements of both of these periods.
Unlike Robert Cooley and Ralph Parker, with whom he would work on RMSF, Spencer was a physician, not an entomologist. Born in West Point, Virginia, Spencer joined the Public Health Service after getting his A.B. degree from Richmond University in 1909 and his M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1913. Then his life as a Public Health officer moving from assignment to assignment began. He was in Victor, Montana, in 1915 (just before Parker) working on programs to control ticks, hoping that would limit spread of RMSF. During World War I, he was detailed to the U.S. Navy as a Sanitary Advisor—proper sanitation was the only way to prevent many diseases at the time. In that role, he went to Pensacola, Florida, to head up bubonic plague control efforts. After the war ended, he spent three years in New Orleans, Louisiana, also leading plague-suppression efforts.
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Dr. Roscoe Roy Spencer in his U.S. Public Health Service uniform.
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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1576
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His best-known work began in 1922, when he was assigned to work with Parker, an entomologist employed by the State of Montana. They were to investigate an RMSF outbreak in the Bitterroot Valley. They knew that RMSF was spread by tick bites but had not been able to culture the microorganism carried by the ticks, so they investigated infected ticks as a potential source of an antigen for a vaccine.
Spencer developed the RMSF vaccine in Washington, D.C., not in the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory. On May 24, 1924, Spencer became the first human exposed to the new vaccine when he inoculated himself. He then went back to Montana to complete more trials of the vaccine with Parker and to set up vaccine production, traveling back and forth many times. In 1930, the American Medical Association awarded Spencer its gold medal for this work.
Then came the beginning of Spencer’s more modern experience as a Public Health Service officer. After leaving the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse laboratory to return to Washington, D.C., in 1928, Spencer continued his medical bacteriology research at the Hygienic Laboratory, which became the National Institutes of Health in 1930. In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the act creating the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Carl Voegtlin became director of the new institute and appointed Spencer his assistant director; Voegtlin was neither a physician nor a career Public Health Service officer. Spencer, who had no training in cancer research, accepted the assignment and requested a laboratory to conduct research.
Spencer became director of the National Cancer Institute in 1943, when Voegtlin retired, but stepped down himself in 1947, having served during the difficult years of World War II. Spencer was the consummate Public Health Service officer, not an administrator; he left just in time to miss the next era of the Public Health Service: the era of Big Science.
Roscoe R. Spencer died at the age of 93 after enjoying several years in Florida.
Roscoe Roy Spencer in his U.S. Public Health Service uniform.
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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1576
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Dr. Roscoe Roy Spencer poses at his desk, May 10, 1928. Note the candlestick-style telephone connected to a large telephone box. Spencer came across as unassuming and pleasant but, as evidenced by his socks, he was secretly bold, giving the first dose of Rocky Mountain spotted fever vaccine to himself to test its safety and efficacy in humans.
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Image: Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum, 1576 and 1577
