40 Fun Facts About Pneumonia

Which Allied war leader's bacterial pneumonia was successfully treated with the early sulfa drug M&B 693?

Winston Churchill was not the drug's only celebrity patient: in 1944 M&B 693 also saved Nero, a circus lion, from pneumonia.

A 1976 pneumonia outbreak in a Philadelphia hotel struck the annual convention of which organization?

The American Legion gave Legionnaires' disease its name; the bacterium was later found breeding in the cooling tower of the hotel's air conditioning.

Which circus performers risk a rare chemical pneumonia that is named after their own act?

Fire breathers can inhale some of the lamp oil they spray, and symptoms often begin only 8 to 24 hours after the performance.

Which backer of the Tutankhamun dig died in 1923 after an infected mosquito bite led to pneumonia?

Lord Carnarvon died within months of the tomb's discovery, and newspaper speculation turned his death into the legend of the mummy's curse.

Psittacosis, a bird-borne cause of severe pneumonia, is better known as the fever of which birds?

Parrots shipped in from abroad were linked to a 1929–1930 outbreak that pushed scientists to study the disease seriously.

Five cases of a rare fungal pneumonia, reported in 1981, were the first clinical sign of which epidemic?

AIDS came to light through those patients because Pneumocystis, the fungus involved, almost never sickens people with healthy immune systems.

Which vice president took over in 1841 when William Henry Harrison died of what doctors called pneumonia?

John Tyler was mocked as "His Accidency" for it; a 2014 analysis argues Harrison really died of typhoid from the White House water supply.

Which English philosopher died of pneumonia in 1626 after reportedly stuffing a hen with snow to preserve it?

Francis Bacon wanted to test whether snow could preserve meat as salt does; the tale comes from John Aubrey's Brief Lives, written decades later.

In which Chinese city were the first COVID-19 cases reported in December 2019 as pneumonia of unknown cause?

Wuhan's health commission issued a notice about the mystery illness, and the WHO office in China was notified of the cluster on 31 December.

The fungal pneumonia histoplasmosis is caught from soil enriched by the droppings of birds and which mammals?

Bats shed the fungus in their droppings, which is why the illness is nicknamed spelunker's lung after the cavers who catch it.

Which tiny air sacs in the lungs fill with pus and fluid during pneumonia, making breathing painful?

Alveoli normally fill with air on every breath; once they flood, less oxygen can cross into the blood, which is why bad cases leave patients gasping.

Which imaging test is most often used to confirm pneumonia by showing inflammation in the lungs?

A chest X-ray is the usual first look; a CT scan shows more detail but costs more, uses more radiation and cannot be done at the bedside.

Which instrument for examining a pneumonia patient's chest did René Laennec invent in Paris in 1816?

The stethoscope began as a rolled sheet of paper, because Laennec was not comfortable pressing his ear against a woman's chest.

Which small sensor clips onto a finger or ear to check how well a pneumonia patient's lungs are working?

A pulse oximeter reads the blood's oxygen level without a needle: it shines light through a fingertip or earlobe, thin spots with an unusually rich blood flow.

Which color can the lips and skin of a baby with severe pneumonia turn when the blood runs low on oxygen?

Blue lips are a sign called cyanosis, which starts to show once the blood's oxygen saturation drops to about 85 percent or lower.

Which brain condition raises the risk of pneumonia by leaving patients unable to cough or swallow properly?

A stroke can damage the parts of the brain that control swallowing, so food and saliva slip down the windpipe instead of heading for the stomach.

Which antibiotic, once so scarce it was recycled from patients' urine, sent pneumonia death rates tumbling?

Penicillin and the antibiotics that followed made pneumonia survivable: before them, close to 30 percent of patients died.

Which word names the kind of pneumonia that is often too mild to keep its patients in bed?

Walking pneumonia is often caused by Mycoplasma, a bacterium that has no cell wall and so shrugs off many common antibiotics.

Pneumonia is the most common fatal complication of which highly contagious illness with a red rash?

Measles damages the membranes lining the nose, throat and lungs, which makes it easy for bacteria to move in and start a second infection.

Most deaths in which 1918 pandemic were caused by bacterial pneumonia that set in after the viral infection?

Spanish flu struck before antibiotics existed, so doctors fell back on remedies such as aspirin, quinine and even strychnine.

Which ancient Greek physician described pneumonia around 400 BC, calling it a disease named by the ancients?

Hippocrates judged cases by the color of what patients coughed up, and warned that sweats about the neck and head were a bad sign.

Which Canadian founding professor of Johns Hopkins Hospital called pneumonia the friend of the aged?

William Osler meant that it gave the elderly a quick, comparatively painless end; in 1919 pneumonia killed him too.

Which staining method did a Danish scientist devise in a Berlin morgue in 1884 to show up bacteria in lung tissue?

Gram stain was devised alongside Carl Friedländer, the pathologist who had argued two years earlier that bacteria were the likely cause of pneumonia.

Frederick Griffith's 1928 experiment injected two strains of pneumonia bacteria into which laboratory animals?

Mice died when a harmless live strain was injected together with a killed deadly one, the first sign that bacteria can hand traits to each other.

Oswald Avery's 1944 work on pneumonia bacteria showed that which molecule, not protein, carries heredity?

DNA was a surprise, since most scientists then assumed proteins did the job; the finding capped years of work at the Rockefeller Institute.

Which age-old treatment did French physician Pierre Louis show in 1828 to be useless against pneumonia?

Bloodletting was then prescribed for almost any fever; Louis's habit of counting outcomes across similar patients was a forerunner of the clinical trial.

Pneumonia immunization was shown to work in 20th-century trials among which South African workers?

Miners proved that immunization worked, yet vaccine development was abandoned once antibiotics arrived, until Robert Austrian revived it.

Which Russian novelist, aged 82, died of pneumonia in 1910 at the remote Astapovo railway station?

Leo Tolstoy was nursed in the stationmaster's apartment after a day's train journey south, and in 1918 the station was renamed in his honor.

Which Confederate general died of pneumonia in 1863, eight days after his own pickets accidentally shot him?

Stonewall Jackson lost his left arm to amputation after the shooting, and General Lee wrote that he would have chosen to be disabled in his place.

Which type of pneumonia develops when material from the stomach or mouth enters the lungs?

Aspiration pneumonia is a known risk for patients on feeding tubes, and placing the tube beyond the stomach may reduce the danger.

Which complication of pneumonia inflames the lungs' lining, causing a sharp stabbing pain with each breath?

Pleurisy can sometimes be heard: the inflamed layers make a rough, scratchy sound as they rub together, which doctors call a friction rub.

Which complication of pneumonia arises when the body's response to infection injures its own organs?

Sepsis kills as many as 30 percent of the people it strikes, and far more once blood pressure collapses into septic shock.

Which term describes pus collecting between the lungs and chest wall, often after pneumonia?

Empyema calls for prompt drainage through a tube in the chest, and the infected fluid can be so thick and lumpy that the tube clogs.

Which term do doctors use for a region of lung tissue that pneumonia has filled with liquid instead of air?

Consolidation changes how the chest sounds: a patient's whisper carries more clearly through the affected area than through healthy lung.

In the CURB-65 score that doctors use to grade pneumonia severity, the letter C stands for which symptom?

Confusion of new onset earns one point on the scale, as do raised urea, rapid breathing, low blood pressure and being 65 or older.

Which intensive-care machine gives its name to a pneumonia that develops after at least 48 hours of its use?

Ventilator patients face a higher risk when the head of the bed lies flat, so raising it is one suggested precaution.

Which virus, known by three initials, is the most common viral cause of pneumonia in young children?

RSV infects nearly all children in the United States before their second birthday, and its full name comes from the giant fused cells it creates.

Which antibiotic, given as dissolvable tablets, is the WHO's first choice for treating childhood pneumonia?

Amoxicillin by mouth is cheap enough for trained community health workers to give at home; hospital is advised only for severe cases.

Which bacterium, also known as Friedländer's bacillus, causes a pneumonia seen especially in alcoholics?

Klebsiella is named after Edwin Klebs, the German microbiologist who in 1875 saw bacteria in the airways of people who had died of pneumonia.

A pneumonia front is a sudden cold front that sends spring temperatures plunging along the shore of which Great Lake?

Lake Michigan cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee can cool by 16 °F or more as the front passes; Milwaukee forecasters coined the name in the 1960s.