Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl was born in 1883 in Prerau, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Austrian parents. While still a child, Weigl’s father died in a bicycle accident, and his mother married a Polish secondary-school teacher. Weigl was raised in Jaslo, Poland, where he adopted the Polish language and culture.
The family moved to Lwόw, where in 1907 Weigl graduated from the biology department at the Lwόw University. After graduation, Weigl became assistant to J. Nusbam-Hilarowicz, and in 1913 earned tenure. He then received doctorate degrees in zoology, comparative anatomy, and histology.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Weigle was drafted into the medical service of the Austro-Hungarian army, and began research on typhus and its causes. Epidemic typhus (not to be confused with typhoid, is a bacterial infection caused by body lice, and thrives in areas with overcrowding. The disease has been described since at least 1528. The name comes from the Greek tûphos, meaning “hazy” or “smoky,” and commonly referring to “delusion,” to describe the state of mind of those infected. Signs and symptoms begin with onset of fever and other flu-like symptoms about one to two weeks after infection. Five to nine days after symptoms, a rash begins on the trunk and spreads to the extremities, spreading over most of the body except for the face, palms, and soles. With the rash come signs of meningoencephalitis, which continue into the second or third weeks, and include sensitivity to light, altered mental status, or coma. Untreated diseases are often fatal.
Weigl worked at a military hospital in Przemyśl, where he supervised the Laboratory for the Study of Spotted Typhus from 1918 to 1920. In 1919, he became a member of a military sanitary council in the Polish army. As Weigl began researching and experimenting, he developed a vaccine.
In 1909, Charles Nicolle had discovered that lice were the vector of epidemic typhus. By 1918, Weigl took the next step and developed a technique to produce a typhus vaccine by growing infected lice and crushing them into a vaccine paste. He discovered that a vaccine could be developed from lice stomachs infected with Rickettsia prowazekii, which was the causative agent of typhus in humans. After this first version of the vaccine, Weigl began experimenting on guinea pigs, and even human volunteers. Weigl refined his technique over the years until 1933, when he performed large-scale testing to cultivate bacteria and experiment with the lice using a micro-infection strategy. Weigl’s method comprised four major steps:
· Growing healthy lice, for about 12 days;
· Injecting the lice with typhus;
· Growing the lice further, for 5 additional days;
· Extracting the lice’s midguts and grinding them into a paste to make the vaccine.
Growing lice meant feeding the lice blood. By 1933, Weigl was performing large-scale testing on humans, by feeding the lice human blood by letting them suck on human legs through a screen. This could cause typhus during the latter phase, once the lice were already infected. This problem was solved by vaccinating the human blood donors, which protected them from death. Weigl and his wife Zofia were some of the earliest lice feeders. Weigl developed typhus, but recovered.
The first major application of Weigl’s vaccine was conducted between 1936 and 1943 by Belgian missionaries in China. Soon after, the vaccines were also administered in Africa. The vaccine was dangerous to produce and hard to make on a large scale. Eventually, other vaccines that were less dangerous and more economical to produce were developed, including the Cox vaccine.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Weigl was continuing his research by working at an Institute in Lwόw. Weigl was able to increase the production of his typhus vaccine. The Nazis learned of Weigl’s research and ordered him to set up a typhus vaccine production plant at the Institute. Weigl began hiring Jewish friends and colleagues for the plant. He soon employed and protected about 2000 Polish Jews and intellectuals, many of whom assisted in his typhus research and experiments with lice, by growing the lice. In return, the Jewish employees received food, protection, and doses of the vaccine.
Weigl’s vaccines were smuggled into ghettos in Lwόw and Warsaw, various concentration camps, and even Gestapo prisons. Weigl was estimated to have saved around 5000 lives during the Holocaust by employment in his Institute.
Following the border changes in the aftermath of the war, Weigl moved to Krakόw in southern Poland. He was appointed chair of the General Microbiology Institute at the Jagiellonian University, and later chair of biology in the medical faculty at the University of Poznań. He retired in 1951, but production of his vaccine continued for several years.
Weigl died in August 1957 in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane, and was buried in the historic Rakowicki Cemetery in Krakόw.
For Weigl’s research and work with typhus at Lwόw University, Weigl’s Institute was created in the typhus research department.
Weigl was continuously nominated for a Nobel Prize in the years 1930 – 1934 and 1936 – 1939, but he never received a Nobel Prize for his vaccine accomplishments or social work. However, in 2003, Weigl was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel for the countless Jewish lives he saved during the Holocaust.