To get you started here is the original 1919 Boston Flu study, where the accidently showed that flu cannot be spread between people - ooops
A few highlights from the attached pdf:
The volunteers were all of the most susceptible
age, mostly between 18 and 25, only a few of them
around 30 years old ; and all were in good physical
condition. None of these volunteers, 100 all told in
number, had "influenza ;" that is, from the most care¬
ful histories that we could elicit, they gave no account
of a febrile attack of any kind during the winter,
except a few who were purposely selected, as having
shown a typical attack of influenza, in order to test
questions of immunity, and for the purpose of control.
As the preliminary trials proved negative, we became
bolder, and selecting nineteen of our volunteers, gave
each one of them a very large quantity of a mixture of
thirteen different strains of the Pfeiffer bacillus, some
of them obtained recently from the lungs at necropsy;
others were subcultures of varying age, and each of the
thirteen had, of course, a different history.
sions of these organisms were sprayed with an atomi¬
zer into the nose and into the
eyes, and back into the
throat, while the volunteers were breathing in. We
used some billions of these organisms, according to
our estimated counts, on each one of the volunteers,
but none of them took sick.
Then we proceeded to transfer the virus obtained
from cases of the disease ; that is, we collected the
material and mucous secretions of the mouth and nose
and throat and bronchi from cases of the disease and
transferred this to our volunteers. We always
obtained this material in the same way : The patient
with fever, in bed, has a large, shallow, traylike
arrangement before him or her, and we washed out one
nostril with some sterile salt solution, using perhaps
5 ce., which is allowed to run into this tray ; and that
nostril is blown vigorously into the tray. This is
repeated with the other nostril. The patient then
gargles with some of the solution. Next we obtain
some bronchial mucus through coughing, and then we
swab the mucous surface of each nares and also the
mucous membrane of the throat. We place these
swabs with the material in a bottle with glass beads,
and add all the material obtained in the tray. This is
the stuff we transfer to our volunteers. In this par¬
ticular experiment, in which we used ten volunteers,
each of them received a comparatively small quantity
of this, about 1 c.c. sprayed into each nostril and into
the throat, while inspiring, and on the eye. None of
these took sick. Some of the same material was fil¬
tered and instilled into other volunteers but produced
no results.
In this experiment we
had little cotton swabs on the end of sticks, and we
transferred the material directly from nose to nose
and from throat to throat, using a West tube for the
throat culture, so as to get the material not only from
the tonsils, but also from the posterior nasopharynx.
We used nineteen volunteers for this experiment,
and it was during the time of the outbreak, when we
had a choice of
many donors. A few of the donors
were in the first day of the disease. Others were in
the second or third day of the disease. None of these
volunteers who received the material thus directly
transferred from cases took sick in
any way.
Our next experiment consisted in injections of
blood. We took five donors, five cases of influenza in
the febrile stage, some of them again quite early in
the disease. We drew 20 'c.c. from the arm vein of
each, making a total of 100 c.c, which was mixed and
treated with 1 per cent, of sodium citrate. Ten c.c. of
the citrated whole blood were injected into each of the
ten volunteers. None of them took sick in any way.
Then we collected a lot of mucous material from the
upper respiratory tract, and filtered ' it through Mandler filters. While these filters will hold back the
bacteria of ordinary size, they will allow "ultramicroscopic" organisms to pass. This filtrate was injected
into ten volunteers, each one receiving 3.5 c.c. subcutaneously, and none of these took sick in any way.
The volunteer was led up to the bedside of the patient; he
was introduced. He sat down alongside the bed of the patient.
They shook hands, and. by instructions, he got as close as
he conveniently could, and they talked· for live minutes. At
the end of the five minutes, the patient breathed out as hard as
he could, while the volunteer, muzzle to muzzle (in accord¬
ance with his instructions, about 2 inches between the two),
received this expired -breath, and at the same time was
breathing in as the patient breathed out. This they repeated
five times, and they did it fairly faithfully in almost all of
the instances.
After they had done this for five times, the patient coughed
directly into the face of the volunteer, face to face, five différ¬
ent times.
I may say that the volunteers were perfectly splendid about
carrying out the technic of these experiments. They did it
with a high idealism. They were inspired with the thought
that they might help others.
After our volunteer had had this sort of
contact with the patient, talking and chatting and shaking
hands with him for five minutes, and receiving his breath five
times, and then his cough five times directly in his face, he
moved to the next patient whom we had selected, and
repeated this, and so on, until this volunteer had had that
sort of contact with ten different cases of influenza, in differ¬
ent stages of the disease, mostly fresh cases, none of them
more than three days old.
We will remember that each one of the ten volunteers
had that sort of intimate contact with each one of the
ten different influenza patients. They were watched
carefully for seven days—and none of them took sick
in
any way.
Dr. McCoy, who with Dr. Richey, did a similar
series of experiments on Goat Island, San Francisco,
used volunteers who, so far as known, had not been
exposed to the outbreak at all, also had negative results,
that is, they were unable to reproduce the disease.
Perhaps there are factors, or a factor, in the transmis¬
sion of influenza that we do not know.
As a matter of fact, we entered the outbreak with
a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and
were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from
person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned any¬
thing, it is that we are not quite sure what we know
about the disease.
