In 1934, Ida A. Bengtson began standardization of antitoxin for six species of Clostridium which cause gas gangrene. Bengtson was the first woman to be employed as a scientist at the Public Health Service’s Hygienic Laboratory, starting in 1916.

Hired by Hygienic Laboratory director Dr. George McCoy in 1916, Dr. Bengtson made a breakthrough discovery in 1917, linking an outbreak of tetanus to contaminated vaccine scarifiers.

Bengtson had many other triumphs in her career, including proving that an infantile paralysis was caused by a new variety of botulism, Clostridium botulinum (type C); aiding the development of the typhus vaccine; and developing the complement fixation test still in use for the detection and differentiation of rickettsial diseases such as endemic and epidemic typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Q fever.