again, with the result that the vaccine was contaminated with living typhoid bacteria. To prevent this, Russell added to each flask a small quantity of tricresol disinfectant, sufficient to kill any bacteria left alive in the vaccine. 22[1]
European Experience
On 10 February 1908, Captain Russell wrote Lt. Col. W. B. Leishman, professor of pathology at the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank, London, advising that it was proposed to inaugurate antityphoid vaccination in the American Army and asking about the British experience. To this letter, Colonel Leishman cordially replied on 29 February, offering "most gladly" to give all the information he could on the subject, and sending him a culture of the strain of Salmonella typhosa employed by the British."23[2]
In the summer of 1908, Surgeon General O'Reilly sent Captain Russell to Europe to study at firsthand the methods and the experience of the British and German Armies. This assignment, carried out with "great industry and ability," as The Surgeon General put it, resulted in a report which The Surgeon General described as a "very valuable treatise on the epidemiology of this disease to date." ' 24[3] The experience of the German Colonial Army, which had tried vaccination for typhoid in 1904 on a voluntary basis, was that the vaccinated soldier was only about one-half as likely to develop the disease as the unvaccinated soldier, and that the death rate was cut to one-fourth. 25[4] In the British experience, as described by Colonel Leishman, there had been among 6,610 unvaccinated soldiers 187 cases of typhoid, with 26 deaths, while among the 5,473 men at the same posts who had volunteered for vaccination, there had been only 21 cases and 2 deaths. 26[5]
The history of vaccination as a method of protecting troops against typhoid fever, including the experience of the British and German Armies with voluntary vaccination, was considered by a special board of officers of the newly created Medical Reserve Corps. Members of the Board were eminent clinicians and
- ↑ 22 (1) The explanation of the accident that left typhoid bacilli alive is that of Brig. Gen. Frederick Fuller Russell, MC. USA (Ret.). (2) Memorandum of conversation with General Russell at Louisville, Kv.. 28 April 1960. (3) Letter, General Russell to Dr. Edward B. Vedder, George Washington University Medical School, 25 October 1935.
- ↑ 23 Original letter, W. B. Leishman to F. F. Russell, 29 February 1908. On file in historical records of AFIP.
- ↑ 24 Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 1909, p. 44.
- ↑ 25 Russell, F. F.: The Experience of the German Colonial Army with Anti-Typhoid Vaccination. The Military Surgeon 24: 53-56, 1909.
- ↑ 26 Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps 12: 166, cited in: Russell, F. F.: The Prevention of Typhoid Fever by Vaccination and by Early Diagnosis and Isolation. The Military Surgeon 24: 484, June 1909.
