 The Cavalcade of America presented by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Years and years, a plague called Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever had ravaged the people living in the Bitterroot Valley of America's Great Mountain Range, the Rockies. To destroy it, a group of American scientists devoted the labor of their lives. We bring you their story in a radio play, The Mystery of the Spotted Death, written by Eric Bono and featuring the Cavalcade players. The orchestra and the original musical score are under the direction of Don Worries. DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents the Cavalcade players in The Mystery of the Spotted Death as tonight's drama on the Cavalcade of America. In Montana a century ago, a group of pioneers is searching for a home site. Ahead of them rides an Indian guiding them. As they enter a beautiful valley, the Indian suddenly stops. What's the matter? I will not go and... You said you're going to show us this valley, didn't you boys? I bring you here. I will not go into valley. Are there any Indians? No. Land looks fertile enough. Is the game those woods younger? Very good hauntings. Anything wrong with the climate? The water? No. And what's the trouble? Indians will not enter the west slope of this valley in springtime. Evil spirits. Well, man, the water's good and the land's good and the hunting's good and the climate's good. I reckon we don't mind a few evil spirits living here. Let's ride on. Have a look. White men riding confidently into the valley of evil spirits. The Bitterroot Valley. You can see where they've settled down there. You can see towns and green fields. You can see hunters in the wooded canyons. But what about those spirits? Look. See that old log ranch house crumbling? Down to the river. See that chimney standing alone? Yonder on the west slope. You make out that cabin with the door half off, flapping in the breeze. Man called Tom Burton lived there with his wife until one day in 1906. Yeah. Who's on? Coming. Sit down neat. Be right with you. Annie. Huh? I got something to say. Sit down. Don't you say it? Annie, this valley's been good to us, ain't it? 40 years we lived here. If anything should happen to me, I don't want you to stay here. I want you to take the $35 we save and go to California and live with our boy. What? What's wrong? I ain't going to no California. We may come here together and you and me is going to go on. Annie, look. No. Tom. Yeah. Yeah. Spots coming in my ankles this morning. Now I'm a risk. Tom. You know what that means? I'll be dead in 10 days. No. No. We'll take the $35 and go into town and get the doctor. No, Annie. They don't know nothing. But the doctors care about the spotty fever. Folks on the other side of the valley never get it. They do it passes quickly. Only the poor hill folks this side of the valley that gets it and dies of it. They get it dead. Dead in 10 days. Don't fret, Annie. We've had a good life together. Anybody home? Who is it? Come in. I hope I'm not intruding. Howdy. I'm from Chicago, University of Chicago. My name is Rick. I'm a medical man. You do doctor? Well, not exactly. I'm a research man. Oh. I'm out here for a vacation and then well, I've been getting interested in Rocky Mountain spotted fever. I understand this is just the season when it crops up. I wonder if you know of any new cases along the hillside this year. Could you cure them? If they give you $10 or $20 or $35. Well, nobody knows anything about the disease yet. See, I want to study it. How long would it take you to study? More than 10 days. Oh, might take me a year. Oh. You see, the first thing that I have to do is to find some way of taking the disease back to a laboratory. I want to try injecting some blood from a patient into a guinea pig so I can make laboratory experiments. And by the way, what's this on your neck here? Oh, a wood tick. Plots of them around here in the spring. Well, you know, it's been suggested that these are what sped spotted fever. Well, it takes for years every spring. I never got. What are you looking at? Your wrists. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got it. I got 10 days, I guess. Oh, Dr. A, there's something you can do. I'm terribly sorry. I know nothing about it yet. Tom Burton died 10 days later. There's his cabin running. The part of him lived on. Down yonder in the town of Missoula, down the river in a laboratory, Dr. Ricketts from Chicago injected some Tom Burton's blood into a guinea pig and its blood into another guinea pig and so on. So something of old Burton lived on. The parts that harbored evil spirits lived on in generations of guinea pigs. Ricketts, you're hopeless. What do you mean? Here, it took me months to get you started on a vacation away from your test tubes and there you are on vacation playing nursemaid to cages for a guinea pig. So, I'll tell you what I'm working on. You can help. Sure. Now, this is a wood tick from a nearby valley where there isn't any spotted fever. I ain't going to let him feed a while on this feverish dying guinea pig. Look at that guinea pig. Yeah. Spotted fever is no picnic. Now, look through the microscope. See the tick digging in a firm foothold with his eight legs? Now he'll start sucking blood. He'll keep getting larger. He'd eat for days if we let him, but we'll move him to a healthy guinea pig. I see. The answer to the question can take is transmit the fever. Exactly. And for the answer, we'll watch our fever charts. First day, normal. Second day, normal. Third day, normal. Fourth day, 104.2. Fifth day, 106. Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Well, we've really got something now, haven't we? If this means the ticks of the villains, then that certainly makes it easier, doesn't it? Easier? Harder, I'm afraid. Much, much harder. You see those wooded canyons on the west slope cutting through the Bitterroot Mountains toward Idaho? See the white streams spilling over their banks? There's a paradise for deer and rabbits and squirrels. Ricketts and his friend descended on that paradise to hunt for ticks the size of a match head to learn the life of the tick. Oh, now you see what we're up against. Yes. In the summer, the tick larvae come out of their eggs, find up these small bushes and cling to the fur of some passing animal. Any animal. And start feeding. Right. And sometimes they inject its bloodstream with spotted fever. Some of these animals pass it on to other ticks and so on. But for nine months of the year, men don't get spotted fever because only full-grown ticks bite men. But the rest of the year, every animal in these woods is helping to keep the disease alive and vicious by playing host to the tick larvae. Well, that means if you want to stamp out the ticks, you have to stamp out every species of animal in these canyons. Yep, you would. Well, that's hopeless. Well, even if it weren't, would it answer our problem? Now, the animals in these canyons are found in other parts of the United States. So are ticks. But when people get the disease in other regions, they usually get over it. Yet right here, just in this one place on the west slope of this valley, it's almost always fatal. Why? Ticks don't explain that. The animals they feed on can't explain it. There must be something else. There must be. And I've got to find it. Ricketts didn't find it. Ricketts died. Working three years in that laboratory in Missoula, he found a similarity between Rocky Mountain spotted fever and typhus fever. So he went off to Mexico City to observe typhus fever and died of it. But like Tom Burton, Ricketts lived on because other men came to carry on his work there in the valley. In Hamilton, 1912, the scientist from Washington got off the train. He was Dr. McCrintyck of the U.S. Public Health Service. And soon he had tremendous whirlwind plans on the way. Quiet, please. Quiet, everybody. Go ahead, Dr. McCrintyck. During the past week with your help, we've burned underbrush all over the slopes of this valley. Because of what we've done, many million tick larvae will never reach an animal to feed on. Now that's a good start, but it's only a start. The next thing we're going to do is go after the animals themselves. We're going to hunt squirrels and rabbits by the thousands. We're going to pour carbon by sulphate down the holes of fairy dogs. We're going to do more than just a minute. Dr. McCrintyck, what's the matter, sir? Nothing with the heat in this hall, I guess. Suddenly felt funny. I think we'd better put off the meeting till tomorrow. Dr. McCrintyck isn't feeling too well. If nothing serious, I'm sure he'll be all right tomorrow. Dr., let me see your risk. No, no. Let me see. Impossible. Impossible. Dr., don't you think you'd better get back to Washington as fast as you can? See your wife and children? Yes, of course. Got to see them right away. McCrintyck died. Ricketts, then McCrintyck. And still other scientists came to unravel the mystery of the Valley of Evil Spirits. In 1922 came a young Virginian, also of the West Public Health Service. You see that little red schoolhouse just outside Hamilton, where the open fields begin? Young Dr. Spencer and his associates found that abandoned, empty of children. So they got permission to use it for ticks and guinea pigs. You know, the trouble with these ticks is the feeds are slowly two days from meal. Well, Dr. Spencer, you have to let nature take its course. Here's an idea. Suppose instead of putting the tick to feed, we just mash it up and, well, in an infected tick in a mortar. Yes. Make a sort of tick emulsion and eject that with a syringe. Save two days on every experiment. Let's try it. All right. I guess we better give this up. Six days, no sign of fever. It won't work for some reason. Meanwhile, we've wasted six days. Well, we found out. By the way, Dr. Spencer, some blood from an infected patient came in the day. Shall we use that? That's one thing we know never failed. Fine. Let's use it on these same guinea pigs. Right. Normal. Second day. Normal. Third day. Normal. Fourth day. Normal. Fifth day. Say, I don't understand this. This guinea pig is immune. You suppose that first dose of macerated tick made him immune? It doesn't make sense, does it? No. Shall we try it again on some other guinea pig? Yeah. Hello, Dr. Spencer. Oh, hello, Bill. Look what I got for you. Just count if you want a beautiful fat text on the mountain gout. From one of the areas we know is dangerous? You bet. Fine. Go take your shower and get somebody to pick you over for ticks. Never get careless about that. Oh, sorry. Thanks, Bill. All right, Dr. Spencer. Must be some infected ticks in this batch. Let's prepare the emulsion, then we'll inject some new guinea pigs. First day. Normal. Second day. 106.2. Third day. Dead. Diagnosis. Rocky mountain spotted fever. Say, we're up against something. Before, we got immunity. This time, the most violent case we could hope to find. Was there some difference between those two batches of ticks? Yes. The first batch was off the bushes. They hadn't had their spring meal yet. This batch had already been feeding. Feeding off a goat. And goats are immune. Well, just the same. Do you think that feeding could make the difference? That somehow the virus in the unfed tick is in a dormant state and even has protective power like vaccine? But as soon as that tick feeds once more on warm blood, the dormant virus springs to life, is reactivated and becomes deadly? Well, what do you think? We've got to test this idea with every possible experiment. A schoolhouse laboratory where scientists were getting closer. Closer than rickets. Closer than the clinic. Experiments went on. Guinea pigs fell sick and died. But do you see that corner drug store down in Hamilton? An old drug store with an upstairs used as a hospital. Well, one day Dr. Spencer was up there standing by the bedside of his young lab assistant, Bill Gettinger. What does it say? 104.3. Spots all over him. He can't last long. Yeah. Poor kid. Poor kid. We've got to work on a vaccine idea. Works for Guinea pigs. Might as say, Bill. Chavin, come in. Could I have some of that injection too? Me and the vaccine we're working on? Well, that's still experimental. Oh, well, they told me you jabbed some of it in yourself. Well, that's what I mean. You see, we've proved the vaccine protects Guinea pigs. We'll be not sure how good it is for humans. We couldn't try it first on other people, so we started on me. I took several injections six months ago. Since everything seems all right, we're now going to start injecting laboratory assistants. Well, of course, I'm only the janitor, but you might call that a laboratory assistant in a manner. Couldn't I have some too? Look, that vaccine is made from deadly infected ticks. We've set out to make those ticks protective instead of murderous. But we still don't know how safe our method is or how much protection it gives. Oh, I don't care about that. I just thought maybe I could help you to prove it. I don't mind taking a chance if it had helped science. Well, if you put it that way, Chavin, of course we'll couch you in. Most local people didn't have much confidence in that schoolhouse laboratory. They weren't surprised four months later when the old schoolhouse janitor fell sick too, bitten by a tick. 104.6. Eighth day. 105.2. Normal. Tenth day. Normal. Eleventh day. Normal. How do you feel, Chavin? I feel fine. Guess I licked it. I guess you did. Lick Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Man, you've made history. I guess I'm the first man in these parts. First of my age anyway that ever got over it. I'm sure of it. Of course, it was your injection that done it, Dr. Spencer. It was your vaccine. It's you I gotta thank. Let's just say a lot of people had a hand in this. People living and people who died. All working toward justice moment. The janitor didn't die. And all through this valley, thousands of hillmen have gone about their lives in safety because of an injection of the deadly tick made friend instead of full. The men of medicine won a victory. Of course, they're still working down there, working in a new laboratory, improving the vaccine, trying to unravel the mystery. Are you wondering why the fever was so deadly in this one valley? No one knows. One theory is that there are so many kinds of animals in those canyons that the disease gathers strength passing through so many. But nobody knows. The disease is about licked, but there is still that mystery. The mystery of those evil spirits. The mystery of the bitter root valley. The work of those pioneer investigators of the public health service, living and dead, to overcome the plague of the spotted death, is another triumph of American science. At Bethesda, Maryland, a million dollar building from medical research has been constructed which symbolizes the faith and confidence the American people have in the United States public health service. For the conquest of science and intelligence over pain and disease, touch all of us with that pride the world takes in the great victories of the human spirit. The importance of the mystery of the spotted death. For material in tonight's play, the Cavalcade of America expresses its gratitude to Harcourt Brace and Company for permission to base this dramatization on material in their publication, Men Against Death by Paul DeCribe. And now DuPont brings you news of chemistry at work in our world. One by one, science has convicted the insect culprits responsible for many diseases. The tick for carrying spotted fever, the flea for carrying bubonic plague, the mosquito for carrying malaria, yellow fever and dengue, the common housefly most dangerous criminal of them all in that it causes an estimated 75,000 deaths in the United States every year for carrying 30 distinct human ailments. While medical men have been studying the criminal methods of our insect enemies, other scientists have been devising police methods to use against them. Most important for home defense, chemistry has given us modern insecticide sprays. Have you ever thought what a real blessing they are? A few puffs of spray in the air and your insect persecutors drop to the floor where they can be swept up without touching a human hand. The active ingredient of modern insect sprays is parythrom extract, obtained from dried parythrom flowers. If you happen to drive through Southern California this year, near Fontana, you may see acres of little white daisies with yellow centers. Experimental plantings to find out if it's practical to grow parythrom in this country. Foreign supplies of the imported daisies vary in both quantity and quality. So DuPont research chemists 10 years ago set out to find a new insecticide agent. One after another, they made hundreds of chemicals for trial. Hundreds of them because the right one not only had to kill insects, but had to be soluble in spray oils, had to be free of unpleasant odor, had to be stainless, had to be harmless to human beings and animals. Chemists bred millions of house flies and put them to death in laboratory lethal chambers to test these trial compounds. Chemical after chemical was prepared, coded, tested and rejected. IN486, IN487, on and on they went in the laboratory records, monuments to the eternal persistence of research. IN928, IN929, and finally the answer in IN930. Out of an unusual acid derived from castor oil and an alcohol from coal, air and water, chemists made a compound that answered all of the requirements. A curious compound that does not replace the pyrithrom extract but makes it possible to eliminate two-thirds of it by heightening its efficiency. It still goes by its laboratory nickname. As IN930, it is sold in combination with pyrithrom extract in a concentrate which enables American fly spray manufacturers to put out efficient low-cost insecticides of constant quality for your protection. The laboratory is an arsenal of public health and DuPont chemists count insecticide ingredients a worthy example of their objective, better things for better living through chemistry. And now the star of next week's program, Agnes Morehead of the Cavalcade Players. Long before America won its independence there was a woman of New England who fought for freedom, religious freedom. That freedom Americans have today, the right to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences. The woman was Anne Hutchinson and we hope you'll listen to her dramatic story on next week's Cavalcade of America. Our program next week, the news of chemistry at work in our world, will tell how one of chemistry's recent achievements is helping to conserve the food of our nation. On the Cavalcade of America, your announcer is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont. This is the red network of the national broadcasting company.