The Story of a Laboratory, Chapter Five: World War II

Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, involving the United States in World War II. One member of the staff of the Greenwich Health Department was immediately drafted. The Army Induction Center in Greenwich reported a large number of cases of tuberculosis and syphilis among the recruits. Dr. Bergin (who had taken over from Dr. Austen as Health Officer in 1937) responded to this by developing a program to do an X-ray survey of the workers in the factories and foundries in the town. X-rays, discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, were first mentioned in a Greenwich Health Department report in 1931, as a follow-up test in a tuberculosis screening program. Dr. Bergin’s staff performed 2,354 examinations on the workers at eleven factories and foundries in Greenwich, using a state-funded mobile X-ray unit. They also X-rayed Town employees, students and other citizens. An unfortunate side effect of this mass community exposure to radiation (perhaps 5% of the town’s population) may have been to increase the individuals’ risk of developing cancers in the future. Dr. Bergin used this opportunity to visit the industrial workplaces in town to assess and correct sanitary conditions there. The number of reported tuberculosis cases jumped from an average of sixteen per year before the war to thirty-four in 1942 and 1943. The laboratory assisted in this program by performing sputum examinations for acid-fast bacilli, that is, tests for tuberculosis infection. In 1942 the laboratory did almost double the number of these tests (205) as were done in 1941 (133). That number doubled again in 1943, to 409.



In 1943, the laboratory applied for accreditation to perform syphilis testing, so that “blood tests for syphilis will be performed routinely,” allowing a faster turnaround time. Previously, all blood samples had been sent to the state laboratory. In 1944, the laboratory was performing Kahn tests on blood serum for syphilis; 161 tests were done that year (Annual Report: 1937, 1941, 1942, 1943).



Frederick Remer resigned as laboratory director in November of 1943, possibly to assist in the war effort. He was replaced by John J. Redys, BS, who was a graduate of the University of Connecticut. Mr. Redys resigned in July of 1944 to join the Army. He was replaced by Ethyl D. Hay, BS (Annual Report, 1943, 1944), the proprietor of a private diagnostic clinical laboratory in Greenwich (Vital Records, 1994). After the war, Mr. Redys went to work for the State of Connecticut Department of Public Health Laboratory in Hartford, where he researched streptococcal bacteria in throat cultures and eventually became the director. He was to write a letter to the Greenwich Department of Health in 1977, advising the laboratory on appropriate tests for them to offer (Adams, 1978). Ms. Hay ran the laboratory until 1946, when Frank R. Bozza, BS, became the laboratory director. Mr. Bozza had attended Fordham University and had served in the United States Army Medical Corps during World War II. He too owned and operated a private clinical diagnostic laboratory in Greenwich (Greenwich Time, 1988). The Greenwich Department of Health Laboratory was operated on a part-time basis from 1946 to 1966. Mr. Bozza, however, emphasized every year in his laboratory reports that “the facilities of the laboratory and its director are subject to call on a 24-hour basis in the furtherance of public health” (Annual Report, 1956). Mrs. Nellie Reynolds still worked as laboratory assistant during this period (Annual Report, 1946).