Lice of Dr. Weigl

2010/09/01 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Medikuntza
• Biografiak
• Historia

At the Weigl Institute in the Polish city of Lwów, several university professors discuss enthusiastically. They referred to mathematics. In fact, in that group most were mathematicians. And while talking about theory and topology of numbers, each had more than 5,000 lice in ditches or thighs, sucking blood. Since the Nazis closed the university, those professors had a new profession: they were lice feeders.

They were hired by biologist Rudolf Weigl and university professors, scientists, etc. to feed their lice. Her intestines fed intellectual blood were the main ingredient for the typhus vaccine.

Weigl began researching typhus in the 1920s. At that time the typhus was playing hard, both in Poland and in many other countries. In Serbia, for example, it caused 150,000 deaths in 1915.

Charles Nicolas demonstrated in 1909 that the typhus vector was lice (due to the discovery that the novel won), and the Brazilian doctor Henrique da Rocha-Lima demonstrated in 1916 that the disease was due to the bacteria Rickettsia prowazekii that lived in the intestine of these lice.

For the research of typhus and the generation of the vaccine was essential the growth of the castor (bacteria R. prowazekii). But at that time there was no suitable culture medium. Weigl decided to turn lice into laboratory animals to grow in them.

To do this, it was not enough to grow lice, but it was necessary to get those lice infected with castors. One way to do this could be to bite a typhus patient, but it was not a very practical or repeatable technique. And it was also impossible to spread from lice to lice. Therefore, Weigl had to look for a solution. It was also found: it occurred to the lice to put one by one through the anus rictos (removed from the intestine of other infected lice). In this way, Weigl achieved the typhus vaccine with the intestine of infected lice.

At first, Weigl used guinea pigs for lice growth and to test vaccines. And although he was getting good results, he did not dare to try with people. Because he was not a doctor. Unknowingly, two brave technicians in his laboratory took care of this: The marriage Michal and Rozalia Martynowicz. Michal had passed the typhus, so he was immune, but Rocalia did not. Michal vaccinated his wife and then allowed her blood to feed Rozalia infected lice. Until he made sure that Rozalia had not taken the typhus, Dr. Weigl was not informed.

Once there, they began to experiment with people from 1933, on a larger scale. Weigl prepared special boxes for the growth of lice with human blood, which was the best way to grow. One of the walls of these small boxes was that of net, built with the net used for the screening of the flour in the Polish flour mills. From this net lice could pull out their heads, but only their heads could not escape. A piece of cloth was placed inside the box (II. Uniform parts of Russians or Germans during the World War for lice to lay their eggs.

In each box there were about 800 lice, of which 7-11 were joined by a tape to the leg of the feeder: the men in the calf and the women in the thigh, to then be able to cover with the skirt the red marks left by the lice. Lice ate for 45 minutes a day. And in 12 days lice became infected with castors. Then it was necessary to feed for another five days, so that the castors would increase inside the louse. For this, feeders should be vaccinated, of course, so that they did not catch typhus. Finally, the intestine was removed from the lice and the vaccine was prepared.

Since the mid-1930s, successful vaccination campaigns began. The news soon opened and Weigl and his institute began to be called. The successful campaign carried out by the Belgian missionaries in China between 1936 and 1943 gave Weigle world fame. He received numerous awards and nominations, received visits from the most prestigious researchers and various institutions also proposed the Nobel Prizes (never given).

Thanks, to a great extent, to that reputation and respect achieved, II. When World War broke out, the Weigl Institute became a safe haven for many. With the arrival of the Nazis in 1941, universities and academic institutions closed down and began cleaning Polish scientists or taking them to concentration camps. The Weigl Institute remained open and Weigl reached an agreement with the Nazis to produce vaccines for the Germans, but in return he would have complete freedom to choose his employees and hire the lice feeders he needed. The staff of the Weigl Institute will receive special identification cards.

Weigl hired university professors, researchers, artists, etc. as a lice feeder. that they were in danger. And being a job of just an hour a day, they organized clandestine university courses. In addition, Weigl had a close relationship with the resistance and, among other things, provided vaccines to the national army. And he also sent his vaccines to the ghettos of other cities in Warsaw and Poland. According to Wladyslaw Szpilman in his autobiographical book The Pianist (Polansky took him to the cinema), "Weigl was as famous as Hitler in the Warsaw ghetto."