Medicine: Jungle Rot

“Jungle rot,” “New Guinea crud” or “the creeping crud” are U.S. servicemen’s names for any & every kind of tropical skin disease. Doctors often find the nicknames convenient, since diagnosis is not always easy and many varieties respond to standard treatment: cleaning, painting with silver nitrate and other chemicals, dressing with sal-sulfur ointment, avoidance of sweating, return to the temperate zone. The various kinds of jungle rot were described by Lieut. Commander Robert R. M. McLaughlin in the Naval Medical Bulletin last week. Some of them:

¶ Aggravated athlete’s foot. This may extend wherever the shoe touches.

¶ Fungus infections of trunk, thighs, face, scalp. These may be red, white or various shades of brown, may produce temporary baldness.

¶ A rash like poison ivy from such tropical trees as the papaya. This usually lasts only two weeks.

¶ Impetigo and scabies. These are not as common as the fungus infections, are very itchy and catching, especially when men do not bathe frequently.

All the eruptions go away in time, but some hang on for months. Civilians often assume the diseases are catching, or venereal. Result: most sufferers try to keep out of sight, even of their families.

In The Family, Social Worker Cynthia Rice Nathan told how jungle-rot shyness is handled at Moore General Hospital near Asheville, N.C. The hospital explains away the townspeople’s fears, a Red Cross social worker coaxes the men out of hiding. When they get up nerve to go to town, no one gives them a second glance.

One patient who went home for a visit even found that his affliction had its advantages. Said he: “I had to convince the whole town that I didn’t have anything bad…. I figured that if everyone was so scared at first at home, why I’d get a wide berth any time I wanted it. It sure was crowded on the train coming back and I started to get hot and boy, did I begin to itch! So I just rolled up my sleeves and showed my splotches. … In two minutes I had four seats all to myself.”