Myrnie Gifford

Gifford was born to Charles Clinton and Augusta Leona Gifford in National City, California.[1] She completed her bachelor's degree at Mount Holyoke College and graduated in 1915.[2] She attended Stanford University to study medicine and earned her medical degree in 1920.[3][4] She moved to the University of California, Berkeley for her doctoral studies.[3][5] Gifford was an intern and house officer at San Francisco General Hospital.[6][7] She completed a Certificate in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in 1934.[2]

Gifford was the first doctor to investigate a Californian disease called San Joaquin Valley Fever; a disease that cause joint pain and erythema multiforme.[8][9] Coccidioidomycosis was first identified by an Argentinian medical student, Alejandro Posadas, in 1892, the year Gifford that was born.[10] It was once considered to be lethal and rare, but was shown by Gifford to be frequent and manageable.[11] She was an Assistant Health Officer for Kern County, California from 1934.[6][12] Whilst there, she reported that valley fever patients developed a skin sensitivity (erythema nodosum) when injected with a coccidioides antigen.[13][14][15]

She began to conduct skin tests on all patients who had valley fever; and found that whilst some were symptomless, they were all positive for coccidioidomycosis.[13][16] Gifford was the first person to recognise that desert fever and valley fever were caused by the coccidioides fungus.[3] This work received national recognition.[17] She was the first to demonstrate that valley fever were the primary stages of the coccidioidomycosis infection.[18] In 1938, Gifford joined E. C. Dickson to explain that the infection resembles primary tuberculosis and a full clinical recovery is possible.[19] She continued to work on coccidioidomycosis and found that it occurred more often in men than in women and people of ethnic minorities.[20] Over 80% of the patients who died had been engaged in agriculture or work where dust could have been involved.[20]

She continued to advocate for migrant communities and found that 25% of the Arvin Federal Labor Camp were positive for valley fever.[21] Gifford retired in 1954 and lived with her sister Myrtle Glifford.[17][22] She died in 1966.[23] There is a library dedicated to her honor at Kern County Public Health Services Department.[3][24]