The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1915.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3980, 13 July 1915, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1915.

The expert enquiry into the nature of the sickThe Puzzling Sickness ness that has at Trentham Camp. been so pre- . valent at Trentham Camp may, it would seem, occupy some days. It is, of course, the case that both influenza and measles have, for some time, been very rife in the camp; but the suggestion is being put forth in some quarters that a still more serious contagious disease has made its appearance in epidemic form among the troops. "What real ground there is for the belief that dengue fever—for that is the special disease which it is being suggested has attacked a number of the troops—is also in'evidence at Trentham must remain to be seen. The particular form of disease that goes by the name of dengue fever, or “break-bone fever,” was very prevalent in Java as early as 1779, in India in IS2-1, and, in late years, in the West Indies, Spain, and in some of the American States. According to high medical authorities its prevalence is favored by the summer season and also to a slight extent by faulty hygienic conditions. The epidemics, as a rule, spread along lines of travel by land and sea, and most authors agree that the disease is contagious. It would seem that a period of incubation lasting about four days is followed by a slight chill and then fever follows. The temperature reaches its maximum at the end of the lirst or on tho second day and is accompanied by headache and by muscular and arthritric pains. It is the position also that the patient’s sufferings are intense, the pains being described as breaking —a peculiarity to which the disease owes the popular name of “breakhone fever.” There is an eruption in connection with the disease which has so fixed time, is evanescent in mild cases, and is never constant in character. A second febrile paroxysm which takes place is usually milder and shorter than the first. The duration of the disease is from seven to ten days, the attack being followed by a slow convalescence which may ho followed by a relapse. Tlie slowness of recovery is due to persistent mental depression and marked physical prostration. It is of interest to mention also that the diagnosis of the disease is not an easy one. The discrimination of sporadic diseases from rheumatism is always a difficult task. Authorities on the subject say that tho course of the fever, however, differs in dengue fever and in rheumatism, while the eruption belongs to the former class alone. What has, doubtless, led to tho suggestion that dengue fever may have made its appearance at the Trentham Camp is tho fact that influenza, in particular, in many of its manifestations resembles dengue fever very closely and the differential diagnosis is a most difficult one. Yellow fever, too, is a disease, which, it would appear, if often, at the outset, mistaken for dengue fever. What tho Minister for Public Health has to say on the subject is that the illness at tho camp supposed to ho influenza has developed into a very virulent form and the measles have also been of a malignant type. It is very satisfactory to know, therefore, that Mr Hurley, the Government bacteriologist, and Dr. Champtaloup, Professor of Public Health at the Otago University, are pushing forward with tlioir investigations with all due speed. In those days it is, fortunately, the jJosition that experts can easily trace by bacteriological examination tho exact nature of any such disease. If it should turn out that dengue fever is now prevalent at the Camp* as well as influenza and measles it must have been the case that it was brought into this Dominion by sufferers among the returned troops from Samoa.