Mumps: A Play By Play

Harvard’s spring 2016 face-off with the predominantly pediatric and parotidial disease, mumps, spurred quite the media frenzy. 2016 was not the first time this viral infection afflicted the student body. FM hit the archives to learn more about the long and tumultuous duel between Harvard students and the mumps.

The date is May 27, 1907. The saga begins in Ithaca, N.Y., in the midst of preparation for the hotly-anticipated race between the Harvard and Cornell crew teams. Our boys are tired but determined, ready to take on the Big Red Bears when, alas!... Down goes a Harvard rower.

According to a New York Times article from 1907, Mr. Glass, “the strongest man on the crew” team, “has been laid up with mumps and will not row.” Mumps, it appears, trounced Harvard in the opening round.

Returning to the regatta in full force, the 1911 Harvard crew team rolled up to their Red Top, Conn. training camp on June 13, ready to race against Yale. Mumps followed.

This time mumps knocked off freshman coxswain Hay. The New York Times, apparently an avid spectator in the Harvard/mumps rivalry, revealed that Hay had fallen victim to swollen throat glands indicative of mumps and retreated back to Cambridge shortly after the diagnosis. Luckily, though, “none of the other members of the crew show[ed] signs of having contracted the ailment,” and Harvard was able to out-maneuver mumps by calling in backup coxswain Nicholas Roosevelt.

Inspiring rumors of biological warfare tactic deployed by Yale to hinder our noble boat boys, mumps coincidentally tracked the 1927 team to the Thames—and the New York Times was there to record it.

For the quintessential Harvard vs. Yale race on June 6, the freshman crew team “members [were all] affected with the mumps” and were unable to compete until a later date.

In a final Hail Mary, Harvard recruited John F. Enders to play defense. A Yale defect who signed with Harvard to study literature and ended up with a Ph.D. in bacteriology and immunology, Enders studied mumps and—in collaboration with two other Harvard grads—established the basis for the mumps vaccine. In 1954 Enders was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. The New England Journal of Medicine also states that Enders told the “Swedish authorities that he would accept the prize only if it could be shared with ‘those who did the work.’”

Harvard’s prospects seems to be improving. Harvard contained the mumps to an estimated 40 reported cases, and was quick on the draw to implement measures like solitary confinement in order to recover ground. Harvard’s strategic plays may have dissuaded mumps from returning for the next few years, but if ever another outbreak occurs, we’ll be looking to the rowers for an explanation...