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od of cultivating the main European strain of typhus causa-
tion,
Rickettsia prowazekii,
with a view toward developing an
anti-typhus vaccine. Before his untimely death in September
1940 he was developing a consortium of typhus researchers
in France, Poland, Romania and the United States, including
Charles Nicolle of the Institut Pasteur, and at one point had
the intention of testing a vaccination in Spain [8].After Zins-
ser’s death one of the Foundation’s officers,Wilbur Sawyer,
spent some time assessing the state of typhus research and
public health work in Europe. He found that the British were
concerned about typhus epidemics, but had little anti-typhus
vaccine on hand. [9]
2
He also found that the London School
of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene had developed an insecti-
cide that appeared promising, but found the British had done
little toward an anti-typhus strategy [10]. The Rockefeller
Foundation believed it had the field of anti-typhus work vir-
tually to itself, and took on the challenge of developing an
anti-typhus strategy.
At this point, early in 1941, the Rockefeller Foundation had
twenty-five years of experience investigating serious dis-
eases, yet its officers still found nothing more interesting
than new epidemics where new strategies and techniques
could be tested. But the Foundation did not engage in a
full-fledged campaigns against disease, preferring demon-
stration projects and trials where innovations could be tried
and brought into practice. Among the countries where the
Foundation had conducted such demonstrations and trials
was Spain, where it also had made some contributions to
the development of modern science [11]. It had malaria con-
trol projects at Campo Lugar beginning in 1930 and later in
Madrigaleho, and three other municipalities; then it opened
a health demonstration project at Vallecas, outside of Ma-
drid, in 1936 [12,13,14]. In conformity with Rockefeller
practices in public health, both initiatives were intended to
have Rockefeller support for several years in order to con-
vince the Spanish government to copy their methodologies
and extend them throughout the nation [15].
Prior to the demonstration projects the Foundation had
made more than thirty grants to public health officials and
laboratory scientists with the aim of modernizing what the
Foundation perceived to be a backward public health sys-
tem in Spain [16].The influence of the Foundation in public
health was so pervasive that in 1933, Oo-keh Khaw, a para-
sitologist from the Peking Union Medical College in Chi-
na who visited Spain on a Rockefeller grant stated that he
was everywhere encountering Rockefeller-trained workers
[17,18].A section of his report describes his experience:
The first two weeks in May were spent in Spain… It was
a great opportunity to see anti-malaria work alone in a
country which has achieved some success. The Programme
was drawn up by the Malaria Division of the Public Health
Department of the Ministry of the Interior. One of the Di-
visional Inspectors – a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow of
Johns Hopkins – came with me, so that besides being re-
ceived with kindness – hospitality everywhere – I saw not
only anti-malaria work but other public health activities
as well.The latter are receiving feverish attention and are
carried out in approved American style as most of the heads
[of public health units] are R[ockefeller] F[oundation] fel-
lows
[19].
It was this heritage of pervasive influence in the Spanish pub-
lic health establishment that the Foundation drew on to set
up a trial of several existing typhus vaccines produced in the
United States, Canada, Mexico, and Tunisia, in order to es-
tablish which one was most effective. In February 1941 the
Foundation was told that José Alberto Palanca, director of
the public health administration in Spain, would welcome
experimental anti-typhus work by the Foundation [20].
With the typhus situation in Spain becoming increasingly
serious, John Snyder went to Spain early in 1941 and estab-
lished a laboratory at the Instituto de Sanidad [21].
The Times
of London reported in April 1941 from Madrid that “typhus
fever has become epidemic,” and that:
Of the various epidemics from which Madrid has suffered
since the opening of the century this is the most important,
not because of the number of cases or the mortality which
has resulted but because of the circumstances in which it has
arisen.The CivilWar and its aftermath, which have brought
restrictions and malnutrition, and a scarcity of certain ar-
ticles, including washing soap. So far some 300 cases have
been registered, with 27 deaths, including those of two doc-
tors. It is said that about 20 to 30 new cases are coming in
daily…The disease is also reported from Murcia, Granada,
Seville and Almeria (…)
[22].
Snyder worked under the general authority of John H. Jan-
ney, mentioned earlier, to test several anti-typhus vaccines.
Spanish public health officials had been manufacturing and
administering the Laigret vaccine, developed at the Institut
Pasteur in Tunis, which had demonstrated efficacy against
murine typhus (
Rickettsia typhi
). Apparently the vaccine had
come to the attention of the Spanish authorities when Jean
Liagret, its developer, had come to Spain in 1936 under the
auspices of the League of Nations to examine infectious dis-
eases emerging during the Civil War [23]. Reportedly the
Liagret vaccine was “used with apparent success in terminat-
ing … prison epidemics” in Spain [21]. However, the Rock-
efeller Foundation quickly assessed the Laigret vaccine as
difficult to produce in large quantity, because it was based
on
Rickettsia
cultivated in live rat brains, and not useful in
1 - Although J.H. Janney is the author of this document, recommendations in the
latter part of it were made jointly with Dr. John C. Snyder.
2 - Researchers should note that Rockefeller Foundation officers’ diaries are availa-
ble digitally in:
www.rockfound.org.