Word: rickettsiae
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...confused with typhoid fever. For generations it was the scourge of armies, and it still flourishes in Poland, Russia and the Balkans. It is transmitted by lice and fleas (hence delousing stations in the World War). The disease is due to a cosmopolitan virus called Rickettsia prowazeki,* which dwells in the intestines of the filthy little insects. Vaccines made from dead typhus viruses provide immunity from the disease, but such vaccines are difficult to make, for Rickettsia prowazeki cannot be easily cultured in artificial mediums, thrives and multiplies best in its natural habitat. Chief European vaccine maker is Professor Rudolf...
...known to contract, 123 are due to bacteria (e. g., diphtheria), 95 to worms (e. g., trichinosis), 81 to fungi (e. g., athlete's' foot), 71 to insects (e. g., scabies), 56 to protozoa (e. g., malaria), 13 to spirochetes (e. g., syphilis) and five to Rickettsia (e. g., rocky mountain spotted fever). Affiliated with these nefarious swarms are 25 scarcely identifiable "inclusion bodies" or Chlamydozoa which cause a bracket of diseases including smallpox, rabies, parrot fever...
Zinsser stated in a paper read before about 200 members of the society in the sectional session of medical bacteriology, immunology, and comparative pathology that he had succeeded in isolating the "Rickettsia bodies of Mooser." the germ that takes millions of lives through the disease, typhus fever. He described experiments in which he had grown large numbers of the germ in pure culture, thereby producing a vaccine which has successfully immunized animals from the fever...