Howard Taylor Ricketts

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Howard Taylor Ricketts

Howard Taylor Ricketts (born February 9, 1871 in Findlay , Ohio , † May 3, 1910 in Mexico City , Mexico ) was an American microbiologist and pathologist .

Life

Ricketts grew up on a farm and was based on the Methodist faith. He studied medicine from 1890 at Northwestern University in Evanston , from 1892 at the University of Nebraska and from 1894 at Northwestern Medical School . In 1897 he received his doctorate. After two years as an assistant doctor and research on blastomycosis , he studied microbiology in Berlin, Paris and Vienna. In 1902 he went to the University of Chicago as an associate professor of pathology .

While on vacation in Montana in 1906 , he heard of an infectious disease outbreak (later called Rocky Mountain spotted fever after the location of the first documented cases ) in the Rocky Mountains, a deadly disease that was confined to a small area in the west . He then examined this, which is transmitted to humans from animals as transport hosts, and in 1908 was able to detect the pathogen in the blood of infected people and in the vector active cattle tick species ( Dermacentor occidentalis ). These are immobile rod or spherical bacteria. Their metabolism does not function independently, so they need host cells to survive and can therefore be called parasites ( Rickettsia rickettsii ).

In 1909 he traveled to Mexico City, where a spotted fever - epidemic prevailed. He suspected that typhus (also called typhus) is triggered by the same mechanism as Rocky Mountain typhus.

A few days after Ricketts succeeded in isolating the pathogen probably responsible for the infectious disease, he and two employees fell ill with it. Ricketts died in Mexico City on May 3, 1910.

The rickettsiae, which are located between bacteria and viruses, are named after him. The University of Chicago annually awards him the Howard Taylor Ricketts Award , the respective winner of which gives a lecture. The Ricketts Laboratory existed at the University of Chicago from 1914 to the 1980s , and the Howard T. Ricketts Regional Biocontainment Laboratory , a biosafety level 3 laboratory , since 2009 .

Fonts

  • Oidiomycosis (blastomycosis) of the skin and its fungi. Journal of Medical Research, 1901.
  • Infection, immunity and serum therapy. American Medical Association Press, Chicago 1906.
  • Preliminary Report on the Wood Tick. Montana Experiment Station, 1908.
  • Contributions to Medical Science. University of Chicago Press, 1911.

literature

  • Dominik Groß, Gereon Schäfer: 100th Anniversary of the death of Ricketts: Howard Taylor Ricketts (1871-1910). The namesake of the Rickettsiaceae family. Microbes and Infection. Vol. 13 (1) January 2011, 10–13 doi: 10.1016 / j.micinf.2010.09.008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Barbara Tshisuaka: Howard Taylor Ricketts. In: Werner E. Gerabek (Hrsg.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, 2007. ISBN 978-3-11-097694-6 . P. 1250
  2. ↑ Olga Brecht: Typhus research in World War I in the mirror of the German and Munich medical weekly , dissertation Institute for the History of Medicine (today: History and Ethics of Medicine) of the University of Heidelberg, supervisor Wolfgang U. Eckart , University Library Heidelberg 2008, p. 91 Olga Brecht: Dissertation Table of Contents
  3. ↑ Ole Daniel Enersen: Who Named It? A dictionary of medical eponyms (website) 1994–2011. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Ricketts, Howard Taylor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pathologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Findlay , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1910
Place of death Mexico city