Media-Greased Epidemics

Article in last week's New Yorker about the parrot fever epidemic that wasn't.

ABSTRACT: AMERICAN CHRONICLES about the psittacosis (parrot flu) outbreak of 1929-1930. Writer tells about an Annapolis man, Simon S. Martin, buying a parrot for his wife for Christmas in December, 1929. He asked his daughter, Lillian, to look after the bird and by Christmas, the parrot was dead and Lillian, her husband, and Martin’s wife were dangerously ill. They were examined by a local doctor who had read about a case of parrot fever in Argentina a few months earlier. Within forty-eight hours, epidemiologists from numerous institutions, including the Hygienic Laboratory in Washington had arrived on the scene. “PARROT DISEASE BAFFLES EXPERTS” the Washington Post reported in a paper that went to press on the night of January 8. Epidemics follow patterns and stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Discusses the development of science journalism in the nineteen-twenties and tells about Paul de Kruif, a master of the “epidemic exposé,” the hair-raising account of a disease that threatens to destroy the human race. Also mentions the simultaneous popularity of science fiction stories on this theme. Describes the creation of the Science Service, a wire service founded in 1920. On January 6, 1930, when the local doctor sent a telegram to the U.S. Public Health Service asking for a serum, the message was sent on to the Hygienic Laboratory, whose director charged Dr. Charles Armstrong with heading the investigation. For the sake of Armstrong’s research, the bigger the outbreak the better. What was needed was parrot-fever panic. A team of public-health officials set about tracking down purchasers of recently imported parrots. Apparent cases of psittacosis cropped up in Providence, Chicago, New Haven, and Los Angeles. The nationwide sweep soon supplied Armstrong with enough samples to begin his work, which was conducted in two basement rooms of the Hygienic Laboratory with his technician, Henry (Shorty) Anderson. Writer notes that the disease had been already been identified in the nineteenth century. Describes how, two weeks after the story broke, it became a national joke. A pro-parrot lobby was formed and insisted that the parrot fever had been chiefly brought about by the active imagination of a newspaperman. Mentions E. B. White’s story about the panic in The New Yorker. But, in late January, scientists, including Shorty Anderson, began dying. Charles Armstrong was admitted to the hospital with a fever, and recovered. Afterward, he wrote a report according to which there had been a total of a hundred and sixty-nine cases of psittacosis nationwide and thirty-three fatalities. In May of 1930, Congress expanded the role of the Hygienic Laboratory, granting it a new name: the National Institute of Health.