THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY 
 
cal Association, held at Dallas, Texas, in 
1926, it was proposed to call it "Mar- 
tin's" disease after the original discov- 
erer of its causative agent in 1907. 
THE DISEASE ELSEWHERE 
In 1919 reports came to the Public 
Health Service in Washington of a new 
and peculiar' disease in the state of 
Utah known locally as "deer fly fever," 
"tick fever," etc. 
Dr. Francis was sent to Salt Lake to 
investigate. In southern Utah he found 
a large number of people suffering from 
some unknown cause, followed by a 
number of deaths. The local doctors 
had been treating the patients for blood 
poisoning, ulcers, septic infection, ty- 
phoid. Nearly all the patients com- 
plained of severe pains in the back, 
swollen   glands,   terrific  headaches. 
Many had huge repulsive ulcers, gen- 
erally on their hands, sometimes at other 
places. No progress whatever had been 
made in curing the sick ones. Nothing 
seemed to help. 
A review by Francis of a large num- 
ber of cases proved that the majority of 
the persons suffering had been handling 
jack-rabbits previous to their sickness. 
They were mostly farmers and Indians 
who   had  taken   part in   jack-rabbit 
drives, then a popular outdoor sport in 
that region. 
From a man suffering from ulcers 
and other symptoms, Francis took some 
blood with which he inoculated some 
guinea-pigs brought with     him   from 
Washington. 
These at once showed all the symp- 
toms of being infected with Bacterium 
tularense. Most of them died within a 
few days after their inoculation. Worst 
of all, Dr. Francis himself came down 
with the disease and suffered from all 
the symptoms he had been observing in 
others. Leaving further investigations 
to his assistants, he went back to Wash- 
ington and into the Naval Hospital a 
very sick man. Others carried on the 
 
Utah studies and determined beyond 
all doubt that the disease was tularemia 
and that it was due largely to handling 
wild rabbits. They tried all sorts of odd 
experiments, did those surgeons. Many 
of the Utah sufferers claimed they be- 
came infected by the bites of deer flies. 
They captured a number of these flies 
and by careful handling caused them to 
bite a number of captive rabbits and 
guinea-pigs, that as far as could be 
determined    were   perfectly  healthy. 
Within five or six days these bitten rab- 
bits and pigs began to die. Dissection 
showed every symptom of tularemia. 
They reversed their experiments by 
taking fluid from one of the dead guinea- 
,pigs and placing a few drops of it on 
various parts of live rabbits. The rab- 
bits began to die in a few days and 
again dissection showed the presence of 
the deadly bacilli tularense. 
Their research work took the surgeons 
of the Public Health Service all over the 
country.    In Montana they found a 
farmer suffering from a bad case of in- 
fected eyes. His blood showed bacilli 
tularense.  Then he recalled one day 
when he was harnessing his horses he 
picked several large "ticks" from their 
shoulders.   Later he remembered he 
rubbed his eyes with his fingers. There 
was no doubt as to the means of his in- 
fection and thus a new source of danger 
was found. Tick fever turned out to be 
tularemia.   Fifteen hundred miles dis- 
tant, in   Cincinnati, Ohio, a    Public 
Health surgeon, Dr. Wherry, found a 
white butcher and a colored cook suffer- 
ing from what local physicians had 
diagnosed as "glanders," a very dan- 
gerous communicable disease, generally 
confined  to  horses, but occasionally 
found in humans. He promptly proved 
it to be tularemia in its worst form. 
The. butcher had handled rabbits in his 
shop and the cook had dressed them in 
the kitchen. 
The disease is now fairly prevalent in 
every state of the Union except Wash- 
 
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