Armstrong – Table of Contents

salmonella bacterium, and taxonomists labeled the organism B. psittacosis Nocard.
Scientists recognized this organism as the cause for psittacosis for many years.
In August 1929 a large outbreak of psittacosis occurred in Argentina. Toward the
end of 1929, around November, an outbreak of psittacosis with increasing intensity
occurred almost simultaneously on three continents – Europe, North America, and South
America (5, 6). A shipment of diseased parrots for the Christmas trade from a South
American port was most likely the cause of the widespread outbreak. In the United States
cases began occurring in November and December 1929. Doctors in the United States
had no previous experience with the disease. The investigators at the Hygienic
Laboratory, whose activities exposed them to a variety of serious communicable diseases,
had never seen any cases. However, the previous reports from Argentina earlier in 1929,
describing patients with high fever, lung congestion, slow pulse and early delirium in
association with sick or dying parrots, enabled physicians to make diagnoses quickly
when the epidemic began to appear in the United States. The fatality rates were high. Of
169 cases reported from November 1929 to May 1930, 33 were fatal (5, 6, 16). An initial
case in close proximity to the Hygienic Laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland occurred in
Annapolis, Maryland. Shortly thereafter additional cases were reported from Baltimore
and Philadelphia (probable ports of entry) and later Washington, DC. Then other areas
began reporting cases.
There is some conflict in the time sequence of the next series of events (5, 6). In
the account by Furman (6), she reported “that early in January 1930 thirty-six cases of
psittacosis were reported to Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming, with three deaths in
nearby Baltimore alone. Telegrams from State health officers and others, asking for