The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis by Arthur Allen - 2012

The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis by Arthur Allen is a fascinating book. A must read for those interested in the impact of Nazi Germany on the medical profession, especially as regards the tremendous impact of the search for a typhus vaccine.  Typhus is a disease of crowded conditions like refugee camps, ghettos, and for the  great concern of the Germans, in their army on the Eastern Front.  Typhus is spread by lice.  It causes extreme high fever, hallucinations, terrible headaches and sometimes death.  The German high command put high pressure on the Nazi medical division to develop an effective vaccine.  They turned to a famous Polish zoologist, a Christian, Rudolph Weigl, whose Laboratory in Lviv, Poland had deveopled a vaccine. 

Lviv had a high percentage of Jewish residents who the Germans were under orders to liquidate, either through shooting or shipping to concentration camps.  Producing the typhus vaccine required large numbers of what were called “Lice Feeders”, people whose blood was fed to the lice.  

The book goes into a lot of very interesting detail about how

these lice are used to produce a vaccine.  Jewish scientists, doctors, academics and ordinary Jews who worked in his laborotory had a measure of protection from The Nazis.  At great personal risk, Weigl smuggled vaccine into the Ghetto and gave the German army a watered down vaccine.

One of his employees was a World famous immunologist.  He was Jewish and he was taken to Buchenwald where the Nazis wanted him to replicate the vaccine.  There were lots of Jewish doctors to work on the project and it was a great break for an inmate to be selected as a “lice feeder”.  The Nazis needed them healthy so they were not subject to the worse cruelties of the camp.  The camp lab was under the control of a sadistic Nazi doctor.

There is a lot of information about the running of the lab in the camp. We see the degradation of the German medical system.  

You will leave this book knowing a lot about lice and with a great admiration for two brave Polish scientists.

Reading this book, in partnership with The Pharmacist of Auschwitz by Patricia Posner,  is highly recommended.  

Arthur Allen has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Associated Press, Science, and Slate. His books include Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver. He lives in Washington, where he writes about health for Politico.

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