How a hotel convention became ground zero for this deadly bacteria
Health Jul 23, 2018 3:20 PM EDT
From July 21 to July 24, 1976, more than 2,000 members of the Pennsylvania chapters of the American Legion attended their annual state convention at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel on Philadelphia’s Broad Street. In the days that followed, Dr. Sidney Franklin, a physician at the Philadelphia V.A. Hospital, began treating several retired servicemen for odd, or atypical, forms of pneumonia. Many of these cases were quite serious, with complaints of severe shortness of breath and excoriatingly high fevers. Worse, none of the laboratory tests Dr. Franklin ordered helped in making a definitive diagnosis of these cases and the antibiotics he had at his disposal did not seem to work all that well. By Aug. 2, four of his patients had died.
>https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-a-hotel-convention-became-ground-zero-for-this-deadly-bacteria