Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1905 — DREADED SPOTTED FEVER. [ARTICLE]

DREADED SPOTTED FEVER.

New York’s Slysterious Epidemic Known as Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis. The spread of cerebro-spinal meningitis has aroused the New York health department to the necessity of a systematic and thorough investigation into the cause of the disease and the possibility of, if not a cure, at least a remedy by which the high rate of mortality of meningitis may be lowered. It Is a curious thing that in spite of the thousands of victims carried off by this form of meningitis and in spite of the progress made in medical science in the last fifty years there seems to be little more of practical value known about it than there was three or four decades ago, when it was' popularly called the spotted fever. Since then it has been discovered that it is a germ disease and that the microbe enters the nose and finds lodgment in the brain. Occasionally the public is informed that some cure for it has been discovered, but none of these nostrums, thus far tried has effected the slightest decrease in the number of deaths caused by the disease. Most of the victims are children, especially those from 1 to 5 years of age, and the vast majority of them come from the poorer classes. It is confined to no one district, or street, or block of the city, wiiere special conditions might give rise to its spread. The popular belief is that epidemics of meningitis follow severe winters, but the history of the disease shows that this is not entirely true. In 1903 there were only 271 fatal cases In New York City, but last year the fatalities had jumped' to 1,211. Last month there were 149 dpaths and in January 107. The onset of the disease is sudden and its course rapid and fatal. Even those who recover are never as strong, either mentally or physically, as they were before the attack. Any conditions which produce bodily or mental depression predispose to the disease, and it has assumed its most fatal type during times of famine and among squalid tenement dwellers or soldiers in crowded barracks. The course and symptoms vary remarkably in different types. In the malignant or fulminant type the disease may prove fatal in a few hours. Remittent and intermittent forms are recognized, in which the fever is lower, or entirely absent for two or three days, and there is a form that much resembles typhoid fever.