"A Whole Community Working Together": Pearl Kendrick, Grace Eldering, and the Grand Rapids Pertussis Trials, 1932-1939

"AWhole Community Working Together": Pearl Kendrick, Grace Eldering, and the Grand Rapids Pertussis Trials, 1932-1939 by Carolyn G. Shapiro-Shapin The Michigan State Medical Society reported in 1930 that "whooping cough is a very fatal disease for young children and unfortunately it is difficult to make parents understand that they must protect their children.. . . There is litde that can be done to control its spread except to avoid the opportunity for infection."1 Throughout the 1920s, whooping cough, also known as pertussis, took more young lives annually than did the better-known childhood scourges of diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, and tuberculosis; on average six thousand American children succumbed to whooping cough each year during this decade.2 In 1932 Michigan Department of Health bacteriologists Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering forged a mutually beneficial partnership with the community of Grand Rapids that would, within four years, produce a viable whooping-cough vaccine.3 This collaboration, which would endure though the 1940s, made it possible for Kendrick and Eldering to study the pertussis bacillus, develop a potent pertussis vaccine, and conduct large-scale, controlled field trials that demonstrated the vaccine's effectiveness. Michigan Historical Review 33:1 (Spring 2007): 59-85 ?2007 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. The author would like to thank Eric Shapin, Susan Stein-Roggenbuck, Kathleen Underwood, and the two anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions. In addition, thanks are due to the archivists from the Bendey Historical Library, the Grand Rapids Public Library's Special Collections, the Grand Rapids City Archives, the Library of Michigan, the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy Archives, and the Grand Rapids Visiting Nurse Association. 1C. B. Burr, Medical History of Michigan (Minneapolis: Bruce Publishing 1930), 827. 2 Louis W. Sauer, 'Whooping Cough: R?sum? of Seven Years' Study," Journal of Pediatrics 2 (June 1933):740-49. 3 In 1932, 13,000 Michigan children contracted the disease and 199 died. "Report of the Bureau of Records and Statistics," 60th Annual Report of the Commissioner of the Michigan Department ofHealth for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1932 (Lansing Franklin DeKleine, 1933), 132; "Report of the Bureau of Records and Statistics," 61st Annual Report of the Commissioner of the Michigan Department ofHealth for theFiscal Year Ending June 30, 1933 (Lansing: Franklin DeKleine, 1934), 556, 666. These reports are based on administrative years (July to June). 60 Michigan Historical Review By the time Kendrick and Eldering began developing and testing their pertussis vaccine, diverse Progressive-Era reformers had been working for decades to protect the health of the nation's citizens. They had employed a wide range of strategies, including urban sanitation, bacterial and chemical analyses of water and milk, health education, and inspection of immigrants for communicable diseases. Kendrick and Eldering's work on pertussis built on three public health trends that have received much attention from historians: the development of maternal and child health programs in the United States and around the world, the emergence of the science of bacteriology, and the growth of research on biological products. In an era when children were viewed as both national and natural resources for the nation's growing role on the world stage, the health and welfare of America's youngest citizens began to receive heightened attention from the public health community.4 New public health advances in bacteriology provided local communities and state boards of health with a myriad of options for reducing infant, childhood, maternal, and general mortality.5 The development of biological products, including Kendrick and Eldering's vaccine, would also play amajor role in improving the nation's health.6 4Richard Meckel, "Save the Babies": American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 102-3. 5 For example, see Evelynn Maxine Hammonds, Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria inNew York City, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Stuart Galishoff, Safeguarding thePublic Health: Newark, 1895-1918 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975); Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics ofHealth Reform (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982); Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz, Public Health and the State: Changing Views...