Armstrong – Table of Contents

men who came into the Service who began to specialize. They realized knowledge to be
learned was growing much faster than the ability to learn it, and you couldn’t be an
expert in everything. Dr. McCoy was instrumental in that.
“Some of the things that worked to the advantage of the service was in regard to
psittacosis. There had been an outbreak of psittacosis in South America. A bunch of
playwrights had gone there, and all came down with psittacosis. It was in the newspapers.
We were on the alert for it. There was a case in Annapolis where a doctor had a woman
patient who had received a parrot for Christmas, and she was taken sick. The doctor
didn’t know what she had. His wife was reading the paper and read about psittacosis in
South America. The wife knew the patient had received the parrot, which had died, so she
showed the article to the doctor. He contacted the Public Health Service to see if this was
a case of psittacosis. I had never seen a case of it, but it was suggested I go to the library
to see what I could find and then go to Annapolis to see what I could find out. I found a
brochure but it was full of misinformation. I went to Annapolis and asked the woman if
she still had the cage. She did, and I took it to the Laboratory. I also went to see the State
Health Officer to let him know what I’m doing. Dr. McCoy always insisted we see the
State Health Officer first. Dr. Riley wasn’t in but the old laboratory man wanted to know
if I would let him have some of the cage cleanings. I gave him some. We were taught that
this was due to salmonella and bacillus psittacosis. This was proven wrong of course. It
was quite different than this thing we had. I told him not to be sure this was a bacteria, it
might be a virus. He said he’d be careful. He developed psittacosis and died. We got
some parrots and inoculated them and soon they came down. My helper was taken sick
one weekend, and instead of reporting in sick, he stayed home. When he came in on