Over one hundred years ago, the gold mining industry of South Africa had a problem: too many workers were dying from pneumonia. They turned to Dr. Almorth Wright, a British physician who had successfully created a vaccine against typhoid fever that saved countless lives of British soldiers in World War I and other wars. Wright and his colleagues developed an inoculation of killed pneumococci bacteria which resulted in a substantial reduction of cases of pneumonia and death in the miners. Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs that causes inflammation and accumulation of fluid or pus, making it difficult to breathe.