13 Facts About Charles Nicolle

Charles Jules Henri Nicolle was a French bacteriologist who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus.

The earliest educational influences on Charles Nicolle were from his father, a doctor at a Rouen hospital.

Charles Nicolle later received his education from the Lycee Pierre Corneille in Rouen, followed by his medical degree from the Pasteur Institute of Paris in 1893.

Charles Nicolle did just that in 1903, when he became Director of the Pasteur Institute in Tunis and conducted his Nobel Prize-winning work on typhus, bringing Helene Sparrow with him as laboratory chief.

Charles Nicolle was still director of the Institute when he died in 1936.

Charles Nicolle's discovery came about first from his observation that, while epidemic typhus patients were able to infect other patients inside and outside the hospital, and their very clothes seemed to spread the disease, they were no longer infectious when they had had a hot bath and a change of clothes.

However, Charles Nicolle found that the chimpanzee served as a suitable alternate host for this study since it was genetically similar to humans, and in June 1909, Charles Nicolle tested his theory by infecting a chimpanzee with typhus, retrieving the lice from it, and placing it on a healthy chimpanzee.

Charles Nicolle's work was not only influential in containing the typhus epidemics that occurred in the region but helped scientists distinguish the typhus fever caused by lice from murine typhus, which is transmitted by fleas.

Charles Nicolle surmised that he could make a simple vaccine by crushing up the lice and mixing it with blood serum from recovered patients.

Charles Nicolle first tried this vaccine on himself, and when he stayed healthy he tried it on a few children, who developed typhus but recovered.

Charles Nicolle did not succeed in his effort to develop a practical vaccine.

Charles Nicolle was the first to determine that sodium fluoride was a good reagent to sterilize parasites while preserving their structure.

Charles Nicolle wrote fiction and philosophy throughout his life, including:.