Word: fever
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...Rocky Mountain spotted fever [Jan. 24]: TIME is a lifesaver. The day before we received that issue, my wife had a 102° fever, a splitting headache, muscle pains and a rash on palms of hands and soles of feet. We thought it was probably a belated case of flu. Within minutes of reading your article, I was on the phone to our physician, who promptly prescribed a tetracycline drug. Blood tests have since confirmed the diagnosis. Since this is the only known case in this area, it could have remained unidentified but for TIME. Thank...
...virus labeled A2-Hong Kong-68 is proving more variable than most preceding strains. For one thing, many victims describe symptoms that seem conspicuously different from those of the patient next door. One man may suffer a three-day bout of sniffling, coughing, headache and muscle twinges, with little fever, while his neighbor may run a high fever, return to work after a miserable week in bed, and promptly suffer a disabling relapse...
Rocky Mountain spotted fever got its name for the good and simple reason that it was first identified as a distinct disease among residents of the mountain states. For years, however, a majority of the cases have occurred east of the Mississippi. Now a disproportionate number are being reported from Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket...
...Spotted fever is caused by an unusual microbe, halfway between viruses and bacteria. It is harbored by ticks, which live in scrub and especially around garbage dumps, and gets to man either when a tick lands directly on him for a free mean or-more commonly-when a tick nestles in a dog's fur and transfers later to his master. Either way, the tick's bite gets the microbe into the bloodstream, where it multiplies. It soon causes high fever, splitting headache, severe muscle aches and mental confusion. Many other diseases produce similar symptoms, but spotted fever...
Although spotted fever may prove fatal if not treated promptly, it can almost always be cured with antibiotics (chloramphenicol or the tetracyclines) if diagnosed early enough. The trouble, say Murray and his colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine, is that most doctors in the East are not alert to the danger. Unless they happen to spot the palms-and-soles rash, they are likely to misdiagnose the disease and treat it with sulfas or penicillin-both of which seem to make it worse. Lives can be saved, they say, if doctors will look for the distinctive signs, especially...