SPOTTED FEVER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 120, 29 August 1910, Page 5

SPOTTED FEVER

SEVERAL VILLAGES AFFECTED. By Cable—Press Association.—Cnpyriarln London, August 26. Ten villages over an area of fifty miles in the Midlands are suffering from spotted fever, and the schools have been closed.

A death from spotted fever is reported at Nottingham.

Cerebro-spinal meningitis is a particularly fatal disease, which occurs sometimes in epidemic form, and has been popularly called "spotted fever," from the appearance produced in some instances by hemorrhagic spots on the skin. Of late years severe epidemics have been noted in Belfast, and also in New York and other centres. It is caused by a minute organism or "eoccus," which occurs in pairs, the microscopical appearance somewhat resembling a semicolon. I't was discovered by Weichselbaum in 1887. Hitherto treatment has been very unsatisfactory* Tne mortality has varied in different epi : demies from 25 per cent, to 75 per cent. Attempts have been made to prepare a curative serum, after the manner adopted in other acute infections dependent on micro-organisms, but hitherto without much success. According to the Medical Annual for 1907, Wassermann, after great technical difficulties, prepared an anti-toxic serum, and if it fulfils the claims made it will deprive a rapidlyfatal maladv of much of its terror.