The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-05-05
SPOTTED FEVER.
Sum of Scientific Knowledge of the Dis
 ease for a Century.

G0Ill DA OCAcllkAlC VI N--S @DAs
 ease for a Century.
 The unusual presence of csrebro-spi- nal meningitis in New York has led to the formation of a special commission to investigate the disease, says Amsrl- can Medicine. The history Of eerebro- spinal meningitis has just rounded out century. the first recognized outbreak having occurred at Geneva in Februa- ", 1895. Its American history began a year later, in March, 1906, in Medford, Mass. In earlier times the existence Of the disease was probably concealed in the typhus account, just as its endemic importance has in late years be7n con- cealed in the mortality tables under vaguer titles. Its essential agent has been known since 1887, but its etiology is almost as baffiing as ever. Its epi- demiology has from the first been very interesting. Notable outbreaks have been brief, closely circumscribed and separated by wide intervals both of time and location. The disease has wholly disappeared from local lnortali- ty records for years together, and from 1850 to 1854 it is said not to have been mentioned in the mortality records of the world. Since 1866 it has been en- demic in New York city, having made mortality record, according to J. Lew is Smith, every year, and every week for the last twenty years. The disease has been endemic in Philadelphia since 1863, and for thirty years in a majority of the important cities of the country.
 At present it is domesticated in the United States, while little is heard of it in European countries. In New York its epidemic manifestations have oc- cured in 1866, 1872, 1881 and 1904. The Boston epidemics apparently do not correspond to this chronology, being da- ted 1864, 1874 and 1897. The discrepan- cy in the 70s is deceptive. Cerebro- spi- nal meningitis did not appear in Mas sachusetts registration until 1873, when it killed 747 persons. In 1872 Dr. Derby recognized the presence of the disease and printed a note on it in the registra- tion report of that year. The vague nosologis title "cephalitis" claimed in 1872 an excess of All deaths over it's re- cord for 1871 and received excessive credits also in 1873, 1874 and 1875. Unus- ual numbers of deaths were charged in 1872, 1873 and 1874 to the indefinite ac- count of ''convulsions." In 1872 'spneu- monia" also rose, with a bound, and for several years maintained bad if not illusive eminence. The epidemic usual- ly referred to the year 1874 really oc' cured in 1873, and probably! began in 1871. The New York epidemic of 1872 might perhaps be traced back in the same way. The present epidemic in New York is at least a year old Dr. Berg's article in rThe Medical Record
 reports the occurrence of 563 deaths in
 the first five months of 1904, the acme of the years mortality having been reached in the second week of May, when seventy three deaths from the disease were recorded,
 J. Lewis Smith says that the New York epidemic of 1872 was preceded in 1871 by heavy mortality from a similar disease among horses, and he speaks as | if unaccounted deaths of horses irl- pressed the professional as we'll as the popular mind. In the rural epidemic of llSl1, in Vermont, Gallup says that foxes and poultry died in numbers from the disease, Law, reporting some cases
 in Ireland in 1865, says that the son of one of his patients had eleven rabbits, and of this number nine died with con
 vulsive and paralytic symptoms. Whit
 taker cites the histories of epizootics among artillery horses at Grenoble in 1S4l, among livery horses at Paris in 1S44, and among domestic fowl in Al. giers in 1S4S, all in association with ep- idemic cerebro-spinal meningitis in
 man. Fagge quotes the veterinarian