Armstrong – Table of Contents

people were going across either way. That I think convinced Rivers it was from mice to
man. That disease was more common than we thought. We had a case in the laboratory
which was a dead ringer to influenza, and there was not a laboratory which could say it
wasn’t influenza. We had two cases where vaccine was manufactured; they were making
an encephalitis or some vaccine using a live virus that had gotten choriomeningitis mixed
in it. The two workers had died, so it wasn’t such a benign disease. We had a few cases
that came from dogs and they were hot too, so the benign was sloughed off the name.
[The interviewer then asked Armstrong how he discovered it was passed from mice to
man] We didn’t know how at first, but from man to man there were no cases of infection,
and from mice to man there were a number of cases that handled mice. One patient had
taken a mouse out of a trap. It seemed to be transmitted by most any route, and if you put
it into a monkey, for instance, it came out in saliva, urine, etc., so when you got an animal
with it he spreads it everywhere.
“I got sick when I was working with these two viruses, and then encephalitis. That was in
the old days when we made out our own payrolls, and I was too sick to sign it. I got over
it all right. We wanted to see what I had, and I was immune to both choriomeningitis and
St. Louis encephalitis; so I had them both and never knew which one gave me the
symptoms. I judge it was likely the choriomeningitis. Senator Borah came in with the
most gorgeous bouquet of flowers in a bowl he had bought in China [EAB – That must
be how Armstrong received the bowl mentioned in an earlier chapter].”
Among the press coverage reporting Armstrong’s illness was Time – The Weekly
Newsmagazine (41). On July 29, 1936 the Editorial Secretary, J. Pequignot, sent him the
following note: “Dear Dr. Armstrong: The enclosed letter has come to us from one of