The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1907 CEREBRO-SPINAL MENINGITIS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3755, 23 February 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1907 CEREBRO-SPINAL MENINGITIS.

Cable; messages have recently had frequent references to cerebro-spinal meningitis and to the large number of deaths occasioned by that malady. This newly-awakened scourge (as a medical authority remarks) is a stealthy foe that breaks in upon a community without any warning, and takes many lives before its presence is discovered. That is one of the features which makes it so terrible in its visitations. Only l /, a couple of years ago 700'deaths took place in New York in three months, and many deaths occurred before the malady was diagnosed. The earlier symptoms are easy to confuse with those of other fevers, and should an epidemic begin with a malignant case, which proves fatal before nervous

symptoms set in, it may be impossible to recognise their true nature at the time. The alarm in Belfast and Glasgow, and elsewhere in Ireland and Scotland, now prevaling, is not surprising in view of the insidious character of the disease, its uncontrollable wanderings in epidemic form, the fact that medical science has not yet identified the specific causative organism, and consequently has no specific cure, and the high rate of mortality varies much in different epidemics and at different stages of the epidemic. It is usually greatest at the height and lowest towards end of the epidemic, and the average of death is about 70 per cent, of causes. Of 50 cases treated in his hospital the mortality ,\yas ,86 per cent., but those patients were infants or very young children. Another authority finds that mics give all grades of mortality from 70 to 75 per cpnf., and he thinks the worst cases are at the commenceitieiit of the outbreak, and the mild ones at the close. Some' time ago there was a ■small outbreak at Albury, Avhen the malady was given its coloquial name of “ spotted' fever.” Muskett’s Australian Medical Guide states that meningitis (pronounced men-in-ji-tiss) is inflammation of the meninges, which are three membranes which surround and protect the brain and spinal cord. When the disease attacks also the spinal cord itself it is called cerebrospinal meningitis, or “ spotted fever,” or “black sickness.” The two colloquial names are taken from skin symptoms, which are by no means always present. The disease was not recognised till the beginning of the nineteenth century, and within that century there were two wide-spread epidemics of it in Europe and three in the United States. It spreads from no one centre of origin or of activity, either by contiguity or on special lines, but breaks out at diverse and apparently disconnected foci in separate towns, villages, or tenements, and spreads in a similar discontinuous way. An epidemic proceeds by fits and ; starts, crops of fresh cases appearing at irregular intervals. Its ordinary methods of propagation are unknown. Where the patients recover eventually a substantial proportion are afflicted with irremediable eye and ear derangements.