Legion

LEGIONNAIRE’S DISEASE

LEGION KILLER

An American Legion convention in Philadelphia left members with a deadly pneumonia. The Legion members were celebrating America’s bicentennial; the occasion brought them all to the Bellevue Stratford Hotel on a hot weekend in July of 1976. The illness progressed in the members after they returned to their homes, all suffering from headaches, chest pains, fever, and lung congestion. 182 persons infected, 147 required hospitalization, and 29 died. The Pennsylvania Department of Health kept these records and Center for Disease Control (CDC) did various research on this infectious disease. Scientists at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, scrambled to identify what kind of infectious agent was responsible for such a lethal outbreak.

A pattern in the outbreak of illness was found in three patients with similar symptoms who had attended the conference. CDC field workers were sent to research on the characteristics of the disease, which people were affected, where and what time they were affected. Among these three patients were Thomas Payne who experienced joint aches and shortness of breath: the next patient Jim Kelly experienced headaches, sour stomach, chest and kidney pains. Research from CDC revealed these symptoms as low grade fever, joint aches, dry cough and diarrhea.

The diseases source was identified to be from the culprit bacterial pathogen. The bacteria were later named Legionella pneumophila. It is now known that Legionella pneumophila thrives in warm water and warm, damp places. The month of July is hot and balmy in the city of Philadelphia and the Bellevue Stratford Hotel offered air-conditioned rooms for the comfort of their guests. Unfortunately, cooling towers are the perfect breeding ground for Legionella pneumophila, and its dissemination through the Bellevue Stratford Hotel was facilitated by the air conditioning.

Since its discovery, a similar disease was found in 1968 called the Pontiac...