OCR Text |
Show j SPINAL MENINGITIS. According to the Weekly Dispatch of London, this country is not alone in its ccrcbro-spinal meningitis epidemics epi-demics and endemics, says 'the State Journal. The Dispatch says the ( spotted fever or meningitis epidemic If '. in Glasgow continues to spread, and and is causing much uneasiness to the city medical authorities. Since Friday, Fri-day, six more cases have been admitted ad-mitted to Glasgow hospitals. One of the patients died' in six hours. Since the beginning of the year no fewer than 113 cases have been notified noti-fied in the city, but it was found that six of the patents were suffering from some other ailment than ccrc-bro- spinal fever. . , The deaths from this disease dur- Jc ing January numbered fifty-two, " which is considered in excess of those of any previous month during the outbreak. At the beginning of last week'; life number of cases of spotted cfever, by., which name the disease is pppular; known, under treatment in the hospitals hos-pitals or under supervision at home, was thirty-five, and since then the malady has spread, with the result that the total has increased to fifty. There is reason to believe, however, how-ever, that the disease is more widespread wide-spread than is generally known, and that in some instances the illness is being treated as something different from what it acually is. Children are the chief sufferers Many of those affected have died Avithin twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the malady has been detected, de-tected, and in sonic' instances in which the patients have recovered paralysis has supervcnul. The authorities arc fully alive to the danger of the disease, and every precaution is being taken to cope with it. Interviewed on the subject, Dr. Chalmers, the medical officer of health for Glasgow, said that last year, from the beginning of June, when the corporation scheduled this disease as notifiable, 200 cases had been reported, but many of these were not spotted fever at all. The difficulty at present was, he, said, to ascertain definitely the existence ex-istence of this very dangerous disease. He thus described the nature of the disease: "Cercbro-spinal meningitis, or spot-' ted fever, has only been known since 1805, when a small outbreak occurred at Geneva. Epidemics occur more frequently on the continent and in the United States than in this country. coun-try. A thousand deaths occurred from this cause in New York City during 1804, but no such mortality has been met with here. "The disease is caused by a microbe mi-crobe which was discovered in 1887, and is called the meningococcus. How this microbe" enters the, body is not known, vut the suspicion is that it gets up the nose and attacks the thin plate of bone between the front of the. brain and the top of the nose. It produces an inflammation .at the base of the brain and in the coats of the spinal marrow. ' r "The disease begins quite suddenly with a, shivering attack and a severe headache. Any light is painful, and' the slightest noise is agony to the sufferer. The muscles at the bafck of the neck become stiff and painful. The spine may become quite arched, so that the patient only touches the bed with the back of his head and his heels. He usually becomes' delirious, some times furiously so, but in a few day.! this gives place to stupor, In about two-thirds of the cases the mulberry-colored mulberry-colored rash appears which has given the name of .spotted fever to the disease. dis-ease. "There is also a ery malignant form of spotted fever. 1 have seen a case where a man went to bed in perfect per-fect health, woke up with a rash upon him, and died in the afternoon. "Rather more than half the cases are fatal, death usually occurring in the first week. If he patient survives longer, his chance of life is materially increased, but he may be left blind and deaf. "Sometimes water on the brain follows, fol-lows, which reduces the mind to a 1 H blank. Although so dangerous,, it is HH not as deadly as other forms of men- HH ingitis, wliich arc practically always HH "No treatment has been specially H Micci'ssful so far. An 'antloxin litis H been prepared, but it is of doubtful H value. The patient slionld"l)e screened"" HH from light and noise and ice applied H to the head and spine. It is custom- H ary for the doctor to puncture the HH backbone at its lowest part in order to draw off the fluid which fs accuniiH HH lating outside the spinal marrow. H "This settles the nature of 'the dis- H ease, for the microbe can be, found in i' H the fluid. Hut it has the further ad- M vantage of relieving pressure, and H therefore the pain to a considerable H extent: It thus probably helps'nature ' H in her efforts toward recovery.' H The disease has spread with great H rapidity in Belfast, where Jive mem- Bfl hers of one family died within a short time of each other. '"I""""' 1 ( HB |