Richard P. Strong

Richard Pearson Strong 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.