friends.
Barbara Birke had had a friend at the hospital, another nursing student, Sabina Kunze, a tall, angular young woman with blond hair. Birke’s death left an opening in the cloister, and Kunze decided to take her friend’s place, and she made the vows and devoted her life to the work that she felt her friend would have accomplished had she lived. In the stories of Rialitsa, Magdalena, and Sabina, we see that the human spirit is tougher than variola.
Most of the people who broke with smallpox were patients and staff from the second and third floors of St. Walberga, and almost none of them had seen Peter Los’s face. Doctors Richter and Posch, along with Wehrle, traced the spread of the virus and concluded that seventeen of the victims caught the virus directly from Los. Two other victims caught it from people who had caught it from Los. One of the people who caught it from him was a nun in a room in the cloistered corridor on the third floor. She survived, but another nun who was put in her room afterward came down with smallpox, went confluent, and died.
A man named Fritz Funke had arrived at the hospital one day to visit his sick mother-in-law, who was in the isolation ward at the same time Los was there. Funke waited a few minutes in a lobby, then put his head up to a door that was propped open a crack. The door opened onto the isolation corridor. Funke pleaded through the crack with a doctor to let him in, but the doctor forbade it. During the minute or so that Fritz Funke had held his face up to the door, he inhaled a few particles of variola. He had been vaccinated as an adult, in 1946, but his immunity had worn off, and two weeks later Funke was rushed to Wimbern inside a plastic bag. He survived a wicked case of smallpox. Today, the bioemergency planners know Fritz Funke as the Visitor, and they wonder about his case and see it as a disturbing example of variola’s ability to spread easily through the air out of a hospital to a vaccinated visitor who barely poked his head into a ward. In the end, there were nineteen cases of variola after Los’s, and there were four deaths.
Peter Los entered the stage of crust, in which the pustules begin to lose their pressure. They can rupture and leak, and they begin to develop into brown scabs that cover the body. During this phase, the bed linens of the victim become drenched with pus and extremely offensive. This was the most dangerous phase of the illness, for death often happens at the beginning of the crust, just as the patient seems to be turning the corner. But Los pulled through, and eventually they set a date for his release. A German television show called
Tage
found out about it and made plans to interview him, but he had no interest in being seen by millions. Two days before he was due to be discharged, he either climbed the fence or someone let him out, and he went home to his family. Eventually, he left Meschede, moved to West Berlin, and took various odd jobs there. It is said he went to Spain and lived on a houseboat for a time.
ONE COLD, DRY DAY in April 1970, three months after Peter Los had been admitted to the hospital, an expert in aerosols from West Berlin arrived at St. Walberga, bringing with him a machine for making smoke. Doctors Wehrle, Posch, and Richter wanted to find out exactly how the virus had traveled through the hospital. The smoke man placed his machine in the middle of Los’s old room and loaded it with a can of black soot. The doctors raised the window a couple of inches, in a re-creation of what Los had done when he disobeyed the nuns. They also left the door to the lobby propped open a crack, as it had been during the outbreak, when Fritz Funke had put his face up to it and come away infected with smallpox.
The smoke man switched on his machine, there was a whining sound, and a cloud of black smoke poured out of a nozzle and headed for Los’s door and billowed down the hallway of the isolation ward. Paul Wehrle ran along
Barbara Birke had had a friend at the hospital, another nursing student, Sabina Kunze, a tall, angular young woman with blond hair. Birke’s death left an opening in the cloister, and Kunze decided to take her friend’s place, and she made the vows and devoted her life to the work that she felt her friend would have accomplished had she lived. In the stories of Rialitsa, Magdalena, and Sabina, we see that the human spirit is tougher than variola.
Most of the people who broke with smallpox were patients and staff from the second and third floors of St. Walberga, and almost none of them had seen Peter Los’s face. Doctors Richter and Posch, along with Wehrle, traced the spread of the virus and concluded that seventeen of the victims caught the virus directly from Los. Two other victims caught it from people who had caught it from Los. One of the people who caught it from him was a nun in a room in the cloistered corridor on the third floor. She survived, but another nun who was put in her room afterward came down with smallpox, went confluent, and died.
A man named Fritz Funke had arrived at the hospital one day to visit his sick mother-in-law, who was in the isolation ward at the same time Los was there. Funke waited a few minutes in a lobby, then put his head up to a door that was propped open a crack. The door opened onto the isolation corridor. Funke pleaded through the crack with a doctor to let him in, but the doctor forbade it. During the minute or so that Fritz Funke had held his face up to the door, he inhaled a few particles of variola. He had been vaccinated as an adult, in 1946, but his immunity had worn off, and two weeks later Funke was rushed to Wimbern inside a plastic bag. He survived a wicked case of smallpox. Today, the bioemergency planners know Fritz Funke as the Visitor, and they wonder about his case and see it as a disturbing example of variola’s ability to spread easily through the air out of a hospital to a vaccinated visitor who barely poked his head into a ward. In the end, there were nineteen cases of variola after Los’s, and there were four deaths.
Peter Los entered the stage of crust, in which the pustules begin to lose their pressure. They can rupture and leak, and they begin to develop into brown scabs that cover the body. During this phase, the bed linens of the victim become drenched with pus and extremely offensive. This was the most dangerous phase of the illness, for death often happens at the beginning of the crust, just as the patient seems to be turning the corner. But Los pulled through, and eventually they set a date for his release. A German television show called
Tage
found out about it and made plans to interview him, but he had no interest in being seen by millions. Two days before he was due to be discharged, he either climbed the fence or someone let him out, and he went home to his family. Eventually, he left Meschede, moved to West Berlin, and took various odd jobs there. It is said he went to Spain and lived on a houseboat for a time.
ONE COLD, DRY DAY in April 1970, three months after Peter Los had been admitted to the hospital, an expert in aerosols from West Berlin arrived at St. Walberga, bringing with him a machine for making smoke. Doctors Wehrle, Posch, and Richter wanted to find out exactly how the virus had traveled through the hospital. The smoke man placed his machine in the middle of Los’s old room and loaded it with a can of black soot. The doctors raised the window a couple of inches, in a re-creation of what Los had done when he disobeyed the nuns. They also left the door to the lobby propped open a crack, as it had been during the outbreak, when Fritz Funke had put his face up to it and come away infected with smallpox.
The smoke man switched on his machine, there was a whining sound, and a cloud of black smoke poured out of a nozzle and headed for Los’s door and billowed down the hallway of the isolation ward. Paul Wehrle ran along
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