At a time when Washington is dumping on unsubstantiated Chinese claims that the U.S. Army started the coronavirus in Wuhan, newly available documents show that America did play a role in the spread of deadly typhus fever during World War II.
A 120-page report, done with the help of an American doctor from the U.S. Public Health Service, details the “intentional infection” of local Muslim populations with the fever in Morocco and Algeria, sometimes with deadly results.
The medical study is among the historical items up for sale at Alexander Historical Auctions in its new online auction for Tuesday and Wednesday. The loose-leaf notebook with graphs of infection and death rates is expected to fetch up to $3,000 and is described as a “highly important, most controversial document.”
Bill Panagopulos, Alexander’s president, said the study reveals some of the nasty ways people were infected. For example, it reads that in one case, a doctor put “one flea fecalith in the eye of a human and produced typhus fever in that man.”
And similar to the current counts in today’s fight against the coronavirus, the 1943 study includes “statistics which show the shocking increase in infections. For example, Casablanca saw cases increase from 161 in January 1942 to 1,284 a year later,” said Panagopulos in his write-up of the document that is Lot No. 1223 in the auction.
The auction house, which sells global historical artifacts and autographs and has been featured before in Secrets, is based in Chesapeake, Maryland.
