Rat Bite Fever & Paresis

In three Illinois insane asylums 37 women and 35 men paretic inmates were held firmly down on their cots. All had softening of the brain, all were paralytic. Into the thighs of those 72 dements, to check another investigator's work (Dr. Harry Caesar Solomon of Boston), Dr. Alex S. Hershfield of Chicago and five associates injected Spirochaeta morsusmuris.

That is a spirillum that lives in the blood of rats and mice./- It causes the rodents no inconvenience. However when infected mice bite grown-ups or gnaw off the succulent fingers, toes, ears and lips of infants the attacked humans contract a shaking fever.

It was with the idea of causing rat bite fever to shake some of the paralysis out of the Illinois paretics that the Hershfield group infected them. Only ten patients died during the treatment, and of those only two deaths could be directly attributed to the infection. Of the others, Dr. Hershfield reported last week, half were more or less physically improved and 20% showed some mental improvement.

The value of the Illinois experiment lies in the fact that therapeutic rat bite fever is easier to cure than malaria, which has a similar good effect on paretics.

/-Rats are merely large mice. There are about 200 species widespread on every continent including Australia. But Madagascar has no native mice. Amateurs distinguish a mouse with 210 or more scales on its tail as a rat. Most mice have 180 scales. Rats follow the migrations of man.