![]() ![]() A local doctor, Hermann Biggs, proposed actions that he believed could save lives: reporting all TB patients to the health department, and tracking everyone with whom those patients had been in close contact. ![]() Tuberculosis, the city’s leading killer, was claiming ten thousand lives a year. The best way to be of help, some physicians decided, was to try to find out how to keep patients from getting sick in the first place.Īt the time that Flügge was measuring droplet travel, New York City was overcome by a terrible respiratory disease. In his day, there was little to offer the sick in the way of effective medicines-beyond, say, opiates or quinine-and few vaccines were available. We are all Flüggeites now.įlügge was obsessed with hygiene, and for good reason. (In Sweden: “Please keep a distance about the size of a small moose between yourself and others.”) We’ve learned that our breath can sometimes carry the coronavirus much farther than six feet, but the number is still useful and seems permanently etched into our brains. Six feet, he determined, and so, last year, that became the recommendation offered by caution signs around the world. ![]() In an age of CRISPR and face transplants, one of the heroes of the coronavirus pandemic was a German doctor who, in 1897, measured how far bacteria-laden spittle could travel from the mouths of volunteers. ![]() We paid homage to him every time we waited in a socially distanced grocery line, used a homemade chute to deliver Halloween candy, or yelled “Six feet!” to a child wandering too close to a stranger. For a man who died ninety-seven years ago, Carl Flügge had a very big 2020. ![]()
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