Moore, Ruth Ella WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY402•
tended to credit Jenner with the discovery of a cure for small-
pox. This is likely a reflection of the lack of credence given by
the mostly male medical profession to the opinions of women.
But there is no doubt that Jenner was aware of, and built upon,
the inoculation strategy popularized by Lady Montague.
The receptiveness toward smallpox vaccinationinitially,
and subsequently to a variety of vaccination strategies, stemmed
from the efforts of Lady Montague. The acceptance of inocula-
tion among the rich, powerful and influential of Europe led to
the general acceptance of the practice among all sectors of soci-
ety. With time, smallpox vaccination grew in worldwide popu-
larity. So much so that in 1979, the United Nations World Health
Organizationdeclared that smallpox had been essentially eradi-
cated. The pioneering efforts of Lady Montague have saved
hundreds of millions of lives over the last 284 years.See alsoImmunity, active, passive and delayedMMoore, Ruth EllaOORE, RUTHELLA(1903-1994)
American bacteriologistRuth Ella Moore achieved distinction when she became the first
African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in bacteriology from
Ohio State in 1933. Her entire teaching career was spent at
Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she remained
an associate professor emeritus of microbiology until 1990.
Moore was born in Columbus, Ohio, on May 19, 1903.
After receiving her B.S. from Ohio State in 1926, she contin-
ued at that university and received her M.A. the following
year. In 1933 she earned her Ph.D. in bacteriology from Ohio
State, becoming the first African American woman to do so.
Her achievement was doubly significant considering that her
minority status was combined with that era’s social prejudices
against women in professional fields. During her graduate
school years (1927–1930), Moore was an instructor of both
hygieneand English at Tennessee State College. Upon com-
pleting her dissertation at Ohio State—where she focused on
the bacteriological aspects of tuberculosis(a major national
health problem in the 1930s—she received her Ph.D.
Moore accepted a position at the Howard University
College of Medicine as an instructor of bacteriology. In 1939
she became an assistant professor of bacteriology, and in 1948
she was named acting head of the university’s department of
bacteriology, preventive medicine, and public health. In 1955,
she became head of the department of bacteriology and
remained in that position until 1960 when she became an asso-
ciate professor of microbiology at Howard. She remained in
that department until her retirement in 1973, whereupon she
became an associate professor emeritus of microbiology.
Throughout her career, Moore remained concerned with
public health issues, and remained a member of the American
Public Health Association and the American Society of
Microbiologists.See alsoHistory of microbiology; History of public health;
Medical training and careers in microbiologyMOST PROBABLE NUMBER(MPN)•see
LABORATORY TECHNIQUES IN MICROBIOLOGYMMumps UMPS
Mumps is a contagious viral disease that causes painful
enlargement of the salivary glands, most commonly the
parotids. Mumps is sometimes known as epidemic parotitis and
occurs most often in children between the ages of 4 and 14.
Mumps was first described by Hippocrates
(c.460–c.370 B.C.), who observed that the diseases occurred
most commonly in young men, a fact that he attributed to their
congregating at sports grounds. Women, who were inclined to
be isolated in their own homes, were seldom taken ill with the
disease. Over the centuries, medical writers paid little atten-
tion to mumps. Occasionally, mention was made of a local epi-
demic of the disease, as recorded in Paris, France, in the
sixteenth century by Guillaume de Baillou (1538–1616). Most
physicians believed that the disease was contagious, but no
studies were made to confirm this suspicion. The first detailed
scientific description of mumps was provided by the British
physician Robert Hamilton (1721–1793) in 1790. Hamilton’s
paper in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
finally made the disease well known among physicians.
Efforts to prove the contagious nature of mumps date around- In that year, two French physicians, Charles-Jean-Henri
Nicolle (1866–1936) and Ernest Alfred Conseil, attempted to
transmit mumps from humans to monkeys, but were unable to
obtain conclusive results. Eight years later, Martha Wollstein
injected virusestaken from the saliva of a mumps patient into
cats, producing inflammationof the parotid, testes, and brain
tissue in the cats. Conclusive proof that mumps is transmitted
by a filterable virus was finally obtained by two American
researchers, Claude D. Johnson and Ernest William
Goodpasture(1886–1960), in 1934.
The mumps virus has an incubation period of 12-28
days with an average of 18 days. Pain and swelling in the
region of one parotid gland, accompanied by some fever, is the
characteristic initial presenting feature. About five days later,
the other parotid gland may become affected while the
swelling in the first gland has mainly subsided. In most chil-
dren, the infection is mild and the swelling in the salivary
glands usually disappears within two weeks. Occasionally,
there is no obvious swelling of the glands during the infection.
Children with mumps are infectious from days one to three
before the parotid glands begin to swell, and remain so until
about seven days after the swelling has disappeared. The dis-
ease can be transmitted through respiratory droplets. There are
occasional complications in children with mumps. In the cen-
tral nervous system (CNS), a rare complication is asceptic
meningitisor encephalitis. This usually has an excellent prog-
nosis. In about 20% of post-pubertal males, orchitis may arise
as a complication and, rarely, can lead to sterility. A very rare
additional complication is pancreatitis, which may require
treatment and hospitalization.
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