In 1929, around 500,000 canaries and nearly 50,000
parrots were imported to the United States from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Trinidad, Salvador, Mexico and Japan. Most birds entered the U.S. via New York, except budgerigars, which entered via San Francisco and Los Angeles. 10 days before Christmas, Simon Martin, secretary of the
Chamber of Commerce in Annapolis, Maryland, bought a parrot in Baltimore for his wife, who subsequently, along with their daughter and son-in-law, became seriously ill. Their new parrot's feathers had become dirty and ruffled by Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day it died. The wife of the family physician made a link to a newspaper article about "parrot fever" in Buenos Aires. In consequence, Martin's physician sent a telegram to the
United States Public Health Service (PHS) in Washington DC, requesting for advice on parrot fever. The story came to the attention of Surgeon General
Hugh S. Cumming, who received similar messages from
Baltimore,
New York, Ohio and
California. The task of solving the cause of parrot fever was signposted to
George W. McCoy, the director of PHS's Hygienic Laboratory and a renowned bacteriologist who had discovered
tularaemia, and his deputy,
Charlie Armstrong, neither of whom had ever heard of parrot fever. Reports soon began to follow from the eastern coast of the U. S., with
Baltimore,
New York City and
Los Angeles, involving other birds such as shell parakeets (Australian budgerigars). The director of the Bureau of Communicable Diseases, Daniel S. Hatfield, ordered the confiscation of all birds at Baltimore pet stores.
February 1930 Two of the 16 people that developed the illness from exposure at the National Hygiene Laboratory died, including, on 8 February, Anderson. Its story was retold in
Paul de Kruif's,
Men Against Death (1933). ==South America==