1965 — July 27-Aug, Legionnaires’ Disease/pneumonia, St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric hosp., DC-14

–14 Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases… 1994, p. 186.
–14 Thacker, et al. “An outbreak in 1965…Legionnaires’ disease bacterium.” JID, 1978, p.512.

Narrative Information

Garrett: “On July 27, 1965, sixty-two mental patients living in St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., had fallen ill with pneumonia. Within a month’s time, nineteen more patients fell ill, fourteen had died. Overall, 1.3 percent of the hospital population had been ill, nearly all of whom had lived in the same wing of the facility. At the authorities scoured the hospital for clues, and tested hundreds of blood and tissue samples, but no cause was found.

“Wisely, somebody put blood and tissue samples from St. Elizabeth’s in the CDC deep freeze, and there they had remained for eleven years. Until…[a CDC researcher], anxious to make as strong a case as possible in the Tuesday presentation [January 18, 1977 press conference on Legionnaire’s outbreak in Philadelphia], recalled the unsolved mystery and injected the old samples into chicken eggs, afterward running antibody tests on the extracts.” [There was a match, thus the St. Elizabeth’s outbreak could be attributed to the same Legionella pneumophila bacterium found in an air cooling system in a hotel in Philadelphia in 1976.]

Thacker, et al. “An outbreak in 1965…Legionnaires’ disease bacterium.” JID, 1978, p. 512:
“Abstract
“In January 1977 an unsolved outbreak of infection at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (Washington, D.C.) that occurred in 1965 was linked with Legionnaires’ disease. The link was made by fluorescent antibody testing with the bacterium isolated from tissues of persons with Legionnaires’ disease in the 1976 outbreak in Philadelphia. In July and August 1965, an epidemic of severe respiratory disease characterized by abrupt onset of high fever, weakness, malaise, and nonproductive cough, frequently accompanied by radiographic evidence of pneumonia, affected at least 81 patients at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a general psychiatric hospital. Fourteen (17%) of the affected patients died. Intensive epidemiologic and laboratory investigations in 1965 did not determine the etiology. The etiologic organism may have become airborne from sites of soil excavation.”

Source

Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases In A World Out Of Balance. NY: Penguin Books, 1994.

Thacker, S.B., et al. “An outbreak in 1965 of severe respiratory illness caused by the Legionnaires’ disease bacterium.” Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol 138, No. 4, Oct 1978, pp.512-519. Accessed 5-26-2021 at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/361897/