Medicine: Tick

Last week a Washington, D. C. woman died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a disease which until recently was found only in the remote Bitter Root Valley of Montana and the Snake River Valley of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The woman’s skin was dotted with typical pinpoint hemorrhages, her lungs and kidneys congested, spleen enlarged, liver degenerated, genitalia hemorrhagic. Two other people in the vicinity have died with the same symptoms since June 1, and the panicky Capital immediately implored district and public health officials for advice on how to avoid a devastating disease which is new in the East.

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is caused by a microscopic speck which may be an especially tiny bacterium or an especially big virus. Bacteriologists cannot decide which. It is transmitted to man by a tick called Dermacentor andersoni, which in an unknown manner migrated and adapted itself to the greenery of the Appalachian foothills.

Picnickers in the woods around Washington are apt to have the tick jump on their necks and hide in the hair of the scruff. Public health bulletins to local papers advised that the insects be picked off the neck very carefully, without crushing. Children coming in from play in gardens or woods should be gone over. So should dogs, cats and other pets in whose fur the tick might find an intermediate spring board.