Biographical Feature: Joseph E. McDade, PhD

At this initial stage of the investigation, the agent…has been distinguished by the following properties: the characteristic disease that it produces in guinea pigs; the characteristic death pattern of chick embryos after yolk-sac inoculation; morphology of the organism in smears of infected yolk sacs and guinea-pig peritoneal exudates; gram-negative characteristics; failure to grow on ordinary bacteriologic media, such as trypticase soy agar, blood agar, and thioglycollate broth; and specific immunofluorescent staining with convalescent-phase serums of patients with … disease.As mentioned above, the organism has since been cultivated on supplemented Mueller-Hinton medium, and studies of its classification are in progress (1).We cannot say as yet whether the organism has previously been isolated from other sources, but it seems clear that this is the first demonstration of its role in human disease.The properties listed above differentiate it from other known microbes causing human disease" (2).O n the 50 th anniversary of the pragmatic thought processes and traditional laboratory techniques that were meticulously devoted to the ultimate character ization of a Gram-negative bacterium as etiology of an historic outbreak-related lower respiratory tract disease, it is more than apropos to briefly chronicle the career of Dr.Joseph E. McDade, a rickettsiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who contributed largely to these findings.This story may be viewed as being a bit atypical to the eyes of some in that a programmed and orchestrated career