Short abstract
Virologist who unlocked many of the secrets of the common cold
David Tyrrell ran the Medical Research Council common cold unit for most of its existence. Though he never found a cure, he discovered almost everything we know about cold viruses and was made a fellow of the Royal Society. At the start of his research it was assumed that there was a single cold virus, which could, perhaps, be prevented or cured. By the end, it was known that there were around 200, which was why it is so difficult. He was the first to identify most of them. He discovered most of the secrets of the common cold and showed that none of the popular myths about prevention or cure were of any use.
The unit was located at Harvard Hospital, near Salisbury. The prefabricated wooden buildings, made in the United States, were a wartime gift from Harvard University and the American Red Cross in 1940. The unit was intended as a 125 bed infectious diseases hospital to control the epidemics that were expected to result from the second world war, and the United States provided and paid for the doctors and nurses.
In August 1945 the buildings and contents were transferred as a gift from America to the Ministry of Health for research into communicable diseases. The Medical Research Council took over the buildings for research into the common cold.
The unit was originally under the direction of two virologists, Sir Christopher Andrewes and Dr Alick Isaacs, who had both tried to grow cold viruses in the laboratory, with little success. They realised that the premises would make a good place to bring volunteers for research purposes, and oversaw the appointment of David Tyrrell.
He had recently spent three years at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, a centre of excellence for virology. He had an MD with distinction and had already, aged 32, published around 25 papers on clinical, laboratory, and epidemiological aspects of flu and polio viruses. He had discovered a new virus, the enterovirus, and was studying influenza viruses at the Virus Research Institute in Sheffield.
David Tyrrell arrived at Harvard Hospital on 1 April 1957, and in the ensuing years unlocked many of the secrets of the common cold—what it is that makes us catch it, how colds are transmitted, and how they affect our bodies. He identified the causes, and analysed the distribution of the common cold and its international significance. He investigated its psychological implications and put folklore remedies to the test.
Figure 1.
Credit: THE ROYAL SOCIETY/GODFREY ARGENT STUDIOS
Around 20 000 volunteers came to Harvard Hospital for 10 days' stay, and many returned year after year. It was a favourite place for students to revise for examinations. They were housed in groups of two or three, as it was thought that isolation would be uncomfortable for them, and they were allowed to walk in the surrounding countryside. Few of the volunteers caught colds, and those that did blew their noses into paper handkerchiefs, which were then weighed and counted.
David Tyrrell worked closely with the World Health Organization, and was director, at the common cold unit, of the WHO Reference Centre for Respiratory Virus Infections.
In 1967 he went to the Medical Research Council's new clinical research centre at Northwick Park as director of its communicable diseases research unit, combining this work with continuing to oversee research at the unit in Salisbury. Three years later he also became deputy director to Sir Christopher Booth, director of the research centre, who found him helpful and supportive. The MRC closed the clinical research centre in 1984, and Dr Tyrrell returned to the common cold unit until the MRC closed that in 1990.
David Tyrrell published a book, The Common Cold (cowritten with Michael Fielder), in 1991; the BMJ described it as illustrating “beautifully the vagaries, difficulties, false pathways, raised hopes, crashing disappointments, tedium and all too rare but wonderful moments of medical research.”
He was also interested in the contribution of viral infections to chronic fatigue syndrome. Until shortly before his death he was chairman of the CFS Research Foundation, and published papers on viruses and fatigue.
He was a committed Christian, and the organist and choirmaster of his local church, and he wore a discreet crucifix in his lapel, but he never proselytised.
David Arthur John Tyrrell was born in Ashford, Middlesex, in 1925, the son of an accountant. The family moved to Sheffield, where he went to King Edward VII School and Sheffield University. He qualified in medicine in 1948 and gained his MRCP a year later, during the three years in which he did various house jobs in Sheffield hospitals. He then went to the Rockefeller Institute.
He was exempted from military service because of a detached retina, and later in his career, when binocular microscopes became the norm, people puzzled why he was happy to still use a monocular one.
Predeceased by his son, he leaves a wife, Moyra, and two daughters.
David Arthur John Tyrrell, director Medical Research Council common cold unit 1957-90, director MRC communicable disease unit 1967-84, and deputy director MRC clinical research centre, Northwick Park, 1970-84 (b 1925; q Sheffield 1948; CBE, FRCP, FRCPath), died from prostate cancer on 2 May 2005.