Epidemic typhus vaccine (Weigl)
Vacuna contra el tifus exantemático (Weigl)
- Date
- c. 1930 · confidence medium
- Place
- Lviv, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine
- Credited to
- Rudolf Weigl
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
The first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus, prepared from the guts of lice infected with Rickettsia prowazekii by rectal inoculation. It was produced at Weigl's institute in Lwów and used in campaigns in Eastern Europe and China.
Weigl researched from 1918 and field trials date from the 1930s; he was nominated almost every year for the Nobel Prize and never received it. His institute employed lice feeders, including persecuted Jews and scientists, during the occupation.
What it led to
- immunisation of populations and soldiers in the Second World War
- Cox's cultivation of rickettsiae in embryonated egg (1938)
- the cheaper Zinsser and Cox vaccines