History
Rocky Mountain spotted fever (or "black measles" because of its characteristic rash) was recognized in the early 1800s, and in the last 10 years of the 1800s (1890–1900) it became very common, especially in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. The disease was originally noted to be concentrated on the west-side of the Bitterroot river. Though it would be decades before scientists discovered the tick as the carrier of the disease, in as early as 1866, Doctor John B. Buker (establishing a practice in Missoula, MT) noticed a tick embedded in the skin of one of his patients. His notes were later studied as part of later research.In 1901, Dr. A. F. Longeway was appointed to solve "the black measles problem" in Montana. He in turn enlisted his friend, Dr. Earl Strain to help him. Strain suspected that the illness was from ticks. In 1906, Howard T. Ricketts, a pathologist recruited from the University of Chicago, was the first to establish the identity of the infectious organism (the organism smaller than a bacterium and larger than a virus) that causes this disease. He and others characterized the basic epidemiological features of the disease, including the role of tick vectors. Their studies found that Rocky Mountain spotted fever is caused by Rickettsia rickettsii, named in Rickettss honor. Ricketts died of typhus (another rickettsial disease) in Mexico in 1910, shortly after completing his studies on Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Prior to 1922, Doctors McCray and McClintic both died while doing research on Rocky Mountain spotted fever, as did an aide of Noguchi Hideyo at the Rockefeller Institute. Research began in 1922 in western Montana, in the Bitterroot Valley around Hamilton, Montana, after the Governors daughter and his son-in-law died of the fever. However, prior to that, in 1917, Dr. Lumford Fricks introduced herds of sheep into the Bitterroot Valley. His hypothesis was that the sheep would eat the tall grasses where ticks lived and bred. Past Assistant Surgeon R.R. Spencer of the Hygienic Laboratory of the U.S. Public Health Service was ordered to the region, and he led a research team at an abandoned schoolhouse through about 1924. Spencer was assisted by R. R. Parker, Bill Gettinger, Henry Cowan, Henry Greenup, Elmer Greenup, Gene Hughes, Salsbury, Kerlee, and others, of whom Gettinger, Cowan and Kerlee died of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Through a series of discoveries, the team found that a previous blood meal was necessary to make the tick deadly to its hosts, as well as other facets of the disease. On May 19, 1924, Spencer put a large dose of mashed wood ticks, from lot 2351B, and some weak carbolic acid into his arm by injection.