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suppressing the strain of typhus then active in Spain.
The Foundation then turned to its widespread network of
sources, and the vaccines subsequently tested by the Foun-
dation in Spain are an illustration of its international con-
nectivity. One vaccine had been developed by Herald Cox of
the Rocky Mountain Laboratory of the United States Public
Health Service. Cox had spent four years in the Olitsky labo-
ratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in
NewYork City learning about viruses, and was well-known to
the Rockefeller network. Apparently the Cox vaccine, which
was manufactured by the Lederle pharmaceutical company,
was the only commercially-available vaccine in the United
States. After obtaining a supply of that vaccine, Snyder and
his support staff in Spain inoculated themselves with it. Each
got a mild case of typhus but recovered.They then inoculated
20,000 Spanish citizens with the Cox vaccine [4: 80].
Other vaccines tested by Snyder in Spain included one de-
veloped by Ruiz Casteñeda at the Departmento de Investi-
gaciones Médicas, of the Hospital General in Mexico City:
Casteñeda had been in Zinsser’s Harvard laboratory on a
Rockefeller fellowship before he returned to Mexico to de-
velop a vaccine based on the strains of murine typhus en-
demic to coastal regions of Mexico. The Foundation also
drew on a typhus vaccine developed by James Craigie of the
the Connaught Laboratories inToronto, Canada.
The project in Spain had all the attributes of what should
have been a successful field test. The host nation’s public
health authorities were cooperative. There was a significant
outbreak of epidemic typhus. The Foundation’s field officer
had up-to-date training, and had several vaccines to test.
However, after several months in Spain, Snyder returned to
the United States convinced that the project was a failure.
He found no convincing evidence that any of the vaccines
could be effective in preventing a typhus epidemic. Among
those tested none had conferred immunity, and the Cox vac-
cine appeared only likely to reduce fatalities.The Rockefel-
ler Foundation stated publicly that the tests in Spain were
“inconclusive” [5:75].
Perhaps the most important result of the Spanish project was
Snyder’s success in responding to requests from the United
States to bring back strains of the typhus infections he had
encountered so that vaccines might be developed to cope
with those specifically European varieties. In an episode
reported in American newspapers, Snyder was able to in-
fect several guinea pigs with the Spanish strains and ship the
guinea pigs to the United States via the Pan American Clip-
per flight out of Lisbon.
In spite of the inconclusiveness of the work in Spain, the contin-
uing warfare in Europe, and the increased likelihood of United
States’s entry into the war, made typhus research an on-going
element of the Rockefeller Foundation’s public health program.
The Foundation searched for other outlets for its program, and
developed promising connections in Chile, Mexico, and China.
Through the Lederle laboratories it also learned about continu-
ing typhus studies in Hungary and Romania.
It is appropriate to examine the Lederle studies to better un-
derstand the range and significance of the Rockefeller Foun-
dation’s network of researchers and administrators. The
head of the Lederle Laboratories, Ralph Wykoff, was well-
known to the Rockefeller public health officers because he
had collaborated with foundation staff on the construction
and operation of centrifuges, among other projects, while
he was a member of the Rockefeller Institute staff. Wykoff
shared with the Foundation a report by a Lederle operative
who recently had been to Hungary and Romania – even
though those nations were becoming increasingly aligned
with Germany and increasingly hostile to the United States.
The report focused on anti-typhus projects undertaken at
the institutes of public health in Hungary and Romania – in-
stitutes that had been created with Rockefeller funding, and
with staff trained through Rockefeller fellowships. Moreo-
ver, the report identified former Rockefeller fellows as the
leaders of typhus work in Hungary [24].
3
This episode demonstrates that the Foundation’s extensive
connections allowed it to survey, study, and otherwise learn
about typhus virtually throughout the world. Moreover, it
could test typhus vaccines in the field with collaboration
from local authorities who already knew and trusted the
motives of the Foundation. Thus, the field tests of typhus
vaccines in Spain permitted Snyder and Janney to assert with
confidence that the Foundation’s attempt to find an effective
typhus vaccination was unlikely to succeed. Certainly, given
the historically-demonstrated long development periods re-
quired to create a new vaccine, and the pressing needs creat-
ed when the United States entered the war, the tests in Spain
indicated that the Foundation’s anti-typhus work had to go
in a different direction. Janney and Snyder therefore recom-
mended a turn toward a vector-control strategy – a focus on
methods of killing the human body louse with insecticides
[25]. Based on Snyder’s experience in Spain, the Foundation
shifted toward insecticides as an anti-typhus strategy.
In his report to the Rockefeller home office in New York
City after the trials in Spain Janney summed up his disap-
pointing experience and the need for a new direction:
Until some better method is developed for typhus control,
our efforts will be directed toward reducing the louse index.
It appears that the usual methods for delousing by means of
steam and hot air may be impractical in Spain. Chemical
methods must be studied (…)
[26].
Snyder and Janney’s recommendation soon was reinforced
by a request from the United States’ National Research
Council Subcommittee onTropical Diseases that the Rocke-
feller Foundation investigate “the advisability of undertaking
a study of various delousing methods in N[ew]Y[ork].” [27].
The next month the Foundation created a laboratory for the
study of louse-borne typhus as a unit of the Foundation’s
Políticas e redes internacionais de saúde pública no século XX