"Map of the Mountain and Pacific States Showing Distribution of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever" (13)
In the early years of the twentieth century, diseases were being re-studied in light of advances in the fields of bacteriology, virology, and pathology. S. Burt Wolbach, at the time pathologist at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Boston Lying-In Hospital and later professor at Harvard Medical School, brought out Studies on Rocky Mountain Fever in the Journal of Medical Research in three successive issues in 1919 and then all three sections were brought together in this single volume.
Wolbach starts his disease biography with a history of the infection and examines the first known records, even positing that the infection has “without doubt existed in Idaho and Montana ever since the first settlements by white men.” (4) While he does later mention records that suppose native tribes living in the area to have been subject to the disease, Wolbach is largely forced to confine himself to written records from the last century or so.
He goes on to cover incidence, mortality, and prevalence in various states and counties, recording cases and tabulating data to track the disease. He then proceeds to a detailed discussion of the progress of the disease itself: skin eruptions, temperature graphs, and potential complications.
Wolbach was a working bacteriologist and pathologist when he was hired by the Montana Department of Health and the Montana State Board of Entomology to conduct the study that resulted in this volume. He was born in 1880 in Nebraska, educated at Harvard Medical School, and had been working at labs and medical schools in the United States and Canada. The study of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever dovetailed perfectly with his other professional interests and made him an excellent choice to conduct the examination.
Wolbach ends his volume, not with recommendations for the eradication of the ticks which had been identified as the carriers of the disease, but with solidifying his argument, codifying it in a short summary and then recommending “further reading” in the shape of a bibliography.
Studies is an interesting look at the biography and detailed examination of a single disease. As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!