Richard P. Strong

Not to be confused with Richard Pearson (physician).

Richard P. Strong
Born	(1872-03-18)March 18, 1872 Fort Monroe, Virginia
Died	July 4, 1948(1948-07-04) (aged 76) Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Education	Hopkins School Yale University Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Known for	Significant work in plague, cholera, bacillary dysentery and other diseases
Spouse	Agnes Leas ​ (m. 1916)​
Scientific career
Fields	Tropical medicine
Institutions	Harvard
Signature

Richard Pearson Strong (1872–1948) was a tropical medicine professor at Harvard who did significant work on plague, cholera, bacillary dysentery and other diseases. He was the first professor of tropical medicine at Harvard, where he critically infected 24 unknowing victims with cholera, causing 13 of their deaths. His department was eventually incorporated into the Harvard School of Public Health, founded in 1922. From 1926 to 1927 he led the Harvard Medical African Expedition and wrote the book The African Republic of Liberia and the Belgian Congo: Based on the Observations Made and Material Collected during the Harvard African Expedition, 1926-1927 in partnership with other Expedition members and Harvard officials.

Biography

Richard P. Strong was born in Fort Monroe, Virginia on March 18, 1872. He was educated at the Hopkins School, graduated from Yale University in 1893, and earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1897.

He married Agnes Leas on January 1, 1916.

He died in Boston on July 4, 1948.

Bilibid vaccine trials

Strong, while the head of the Bureau of Laboratories in Manila, carried out vaccine trials at the Philippine Bilibid Prison. During one of the experimental trials in 1906, twenty-four prisoners were injected, without their consent, with a cholera vaccine that was contaminated with bubonic plague. The prisoners contracted bubonic plague, and 13 died.

Sources

• Harvard Public Health Alumni Bulletin, November 1948, pp. 43–44.
• "Deaths". JAMA 1948; 138 (4)
• Richard P. Strong Papers at the Countway repository of the Harvard Medical School. Includes images of R.P. Strong: 1924 on Amazon, c.1930s in Serbia, 1934 with the Harvard African Expedition
• Eli Chernin (1989). "Richard Pearson Strong and the Manchurian Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague, 1910–1911" (PDF). Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 44 (3): 296–319. doi:10.1093/jhmas/44.3.296. PMID 2671146.

External links

Media related to Richard Pearson Strong (physician) at Wikimedia Commons

• Richard P. Strong Papers, 1911-2004 (inclusive), 1911-1945 (bulk). GA 82. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.