Manchurian Fever

Just behind the front lines in Korea last weekend, U.S. soldiers were diligently hunting rabbits. With trap and snare they were also trying to catch rats and mice. There was nothing frivolous about this: the soldiers were medical corpsmen, assigned to help run down an enemy which has killed at least 25 of their buddies and made hundreds ill since June: the virus, or something like a virus, that causes epidemic hemorrhagic fever.

This disease was first described by Japanese army doctors in 1939, when their troops came down with it in Manchuria (hence its popular name, "Manchurian fever"). The death rate then ran as high as 30%. No U.S. soldier is known to have contracted the disease in World War II or during the first year of war in Korea. Last June it broke out among forward troops who had been living on the ground.

Sometimes as many as ten men in a unit fell ill at once; sometimes only one man in a pup tent. The first symptoms are like grippe: headache, fever, aching joints and fatigue. The fever may shoot to 106DEG, the pulse weakens, and blood pressure falls as in shock. In the acute stage, tiny hemorrhages in the eyeballs make them bloodshot; other hemorrhages appear under the skin of shoulders and belly, and there may be bleeding from the nose, kidneys or intestines.

No drugs alter the course of the disease. But U.S. troops get far better care than the first Japanese victims: infusions of glucose and vitamins, and sometimes ACTH or cortisone for shock. Transfusions of blood from convalescent patients, given to victims in the early stages, seem to speed their recovery. This strengthens the belief that the fever is caused by a virus, and that a convalescent's blood contains antibodies manufactured during the illness.

One way & another, the toll among U.S. troops has been held down to 25 deaths among 187 proved cases (there may have been almost 500 cases, all told, with many unidentified). The medics hope that their hunters and trappers will bring in samples of the responsible virus in the rabbits and vermin, and in the mites which infest them. After that, work can begin on developing a protective vaccine. Meanwhile, to front-line troops the season's first bitter cold was almost welcome: it appeared that nighttime freezes were checking the fever's spread.

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