Armstrong – Table of Contents

rooms where the work was in progress, gradually became ill with psittacosis and required
hospitalization. Including Armstrong and Shorty Anderson, McCoy (14) reported a total
of 11 cases developing among Hygienic Laboratory personnel between January 25 and
March 15, 1930. The reason for the spread of psittacosis to other personnel not in direct
contact with infected birds was not apparent. Rivers (15), in his oral autobiography,
stated that the only thing hygienic about the Hygienic Laboratory was its name. He
described the facility as unbelievably filthy, and he speculated that that the psittacosis
organism was possibly disseminated around the Laboratory by the large cockroach
infestation. In any event, McCoy realized that the building was massively contaminated
with psittacosis and that drastic action had to be taken to contain the epidemic within the
Laboratory. McCoy (14) observed that there was a rather long and fairly uniform interval
between cases down to and including the fourth case, while the remaining seven cases
formed a group with dates of onset varying to only such an extent as to lead to the
suspicion that all were infected from a common source, but the source was unknown.
McCoy, considering the incubation period of psittacosis to be 9 to 10 days, suspected that
the group of seven cases probably was infected in the early part of March.
McCoy decided to shut the Laboratory down for the first time in its history on
March 15, 1930. The remaining healthy personnel carried out the experimental animals
not involved in psittacosis research to temporary quarters. McCoy, himself, went down to
the basement rooms, exterminated with chloroform all the animals used in the psittacosis
studies, including sick and healthy parrots, all the guinea pigs, mice, rats, pigeons and
monkeys and burned all the dead bodies in the Laboratory incinerator. He then
disinfected all the animal cages with cresol. The windows of the Laboratory had been