48 
Lice and Disease 
3. The discovery that the Virus of Typhus occurs in the Blood of 
THE AFFECTED AND THAT THE DISEASE IS COMMUNICABLE TO MAN AND 
Animals by Inoculation. 
That the blood of typhus cases is infective for man was first demon¬ 
strated by Moczutovski (1900) 1 , who inoculated himself therewith and 
suffered from an attack of typhus fever after an incubation period of 
18 days. His heart never recovered from the effects of the disease 
and he died, a hero of science, in 1903 2 . Yersin and Vassal 1 confirmed 
Moczutkovski’s observation by inoculating two men who developed 
typhus after 14 and 21 days respectively. 
The discovery that typhus is communicable to apes and monkeys, 
made by Nicolle (12. vii. 1909, pp. 157-160), was of great importance 
since it enabled experimental investigation to be conducted in the 
laboratory 3 . Nicolle, working in Tunis, transmitted typhus to a chim¬ 
panzee by the inoculation of 1 c.c. of human blood taken from a patient 
on the third day of the attack of fever, after the eruption had appeared. 
The chimpanzee, a young animal, after an incubation period of 24 days, 
developed a succession of typical symptoms of typhus: fever, eruption, 
prostration, diarrhoea, dark red plaques on the trunk followed by 
the disappearance of the eruption, desquamation on the hands, pro¬ 
gressive emaciation, and a subnormal temperature. Two days before 
the rash appeared, when the chimpanzee’s temperature registered 
40-2° C., some blood was drawn from the animal and 1 c.c. thereof 
was injected into a monkey, Macacus sinicus, which, after an incubation 
period of 13 days, in turn developed typical typhus. 
The work of Nicolle and his collaborators appeared to indicate 
that typhus was not directly communicable by inoculation from man 
to monkey, although they succeeded in infecting monkeys after passing 
the virus through the chimpanzee. Monkeys, however, frequently 
react atypically, as Anderson and Goldherger (18. n. 1910, pji. 177-185) 
found in Mexico, when experimenting with Macacus rhesus and Cebus 
capuchinus which they inoculated with 20 c.c. and 8 c.c. of human 
“tabardillo” (= typhus) blood in two or three successive doses 4 . 
1 Cited by Tlioinot (1915). 
2 For biography see Obozr. psichiat., nevrol., etc., Petrograd, 1903, vm. 320. 
3 The dog, cat, and rabbit are definitely stated to be immune (Nicolle, Blanc and 
Conseil, 1. xii. 1914. p. 103). 
4 It was only at a subsequent date that the identity of Mexican “tabardillo” and 
European typhus was established to the satisfaction of the authors. I would note, 
however, that Hirsch (1881, p. 402) said they were identical. 
