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Show en infectious disease by William Barry Furlong delphia. They are also carrying out long-raninvestigations into such diseases as leprosy, rabies, malaria, and typhus. There are about 45 EIS agents who operate from offices in 16 states. Their average age is under 30. Only about half of them are M.D.'s. ge call them "disease detectives." Some people call them the "FBI of medicine." No matter what the name, they have one of the toughest jobs in all medicine: to combine the dirty, grueling legwork of the cop with the shrewd, penetrating insight of the scientist These are the young men and women of the U. S. Public Health Service's Epidemic Intelligence Service, a crack corps of experts who like the U. S. Marines go wherever trouble breaks out Their headquarters is the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, Ga. Their job is to help wipe out the epidemics that still crop up with surprising frequency throughout the United States. Though many people think we've conquered infectious disease, it still causes one death in every 10. "The situation is far more serious in the younger age groups (under 35) where the ratio is one to four," says Dr. Theodore Bauer of the U. S. Public Health Service. Infectious diseases from diphtheria to malaria to the flu ... account "for a majority of the absences among the working population and' among school children; they are the main cause of absence from duty in our armed forces," says Dr. Bauer. At times whole communities are threatened by infection. That's when the "disease detectives" go t into action, first to help quell the epidemic, then to find out why it started. A few years ago, 13 people in Trinidad, Colo., fell ill with typhoid fever. A rush call was sent to EIS, and Dr. Harold Nitowsky was assigned to the case. He quickly discovered that all 13 victims had one thing in common they were members of the same church. When was the last time they'd been in church together? "Why just last month at a church dinner," -- said one of the victims. " ' ': r. ; -- ; "What did you eat?" asked Dr. Nitowsky. The patient painstakingly recalled everything she'd eaten at the church dinner. Then Dr. Nitowsky threw a "foodless banquet" He asked every healthy person who'd been to the church dinner to make up a list of the foods he'd eaten. He compared these lists with those given him by the typhoid victims. Through a process of elimination, he found three dishes that had been eaten by all of the victims, but not by the healthy persons carrot salad, macaroni-and-chee- se salad, and devil's food cake. Then he went to the people who'd prepared these dishes and gave them a complete examination. One of them a woman who had made the carrot salad was, quite unknow- ingly, a typhoid carrier. Every year, the EIS handles 40 to 50 such outbreaks. Last year they covered everything from smallpox in ELy Nev., to diphtheria in Phila 58-year- -old 4, Family Weekly, April 12, 1959 The rest are nurses, bacteriologists, veterinarians (for rabies, anthrax, and other animal diseases transmissible to man), and even engineers and statisticians "to help put order in the docs' brains," says Dr. Alexander Langmuir, the tall, restless chief of EIS. Each new recruit to EIS spends four weeks studying epidemics and how to combat them. "I never saw anything like this in medical school," says one young EIS agent "I've run into diseases I've never even heard of." On an emergency assignment as he quickly learns the EIS worker has the responsibility, but not the authority of a cop. He may not treat patients; that is left strictly to the Nor may he enter any epidemic area, except Federal reservations, without request from the state health officer. . , "The first guardian of the nation's health is the private physician," says Dr. Langmuir. "The first responsibility in any epidemic is that of tiie county and state public-heal- th officers." breaks out, these expert rush into action. " private-physician- The . killers job of EIS agents is not without its To - find the microbe causing an epidemic, they must frequently expose themselves to its attack. --Take 'The Mystery of the Missing Mosquitoes." er It started, for the EIS, one day 1954 when Dr. Lloyd Southwick of Edinburg, in Tex., picked up a phone and touched off the mid-Summ- chain reaction that brought EIS agents swarming into town. Dr. Southwick, a private physician, "was , puzzled by, many vaguely disturbing things about the polio epidemic this was before the Salk vaccine that had broken out all around him. Usually the peak1 of the polio season there came in late Spring or early Summer, but now it was August Just as strange was the unusual number of nonparalytic polio cases among them. And Dr. Southwick couldn't see why as many adults as children were stricken "unless," he reasoned, "it isn't polio after all." The next day, at the request of the Texas public-heal- th officer, two EIS agents from Kansas City rushed to Edinburg. Swiftly, they confirmed Dr. Southwick's suspicions that it wasn't polio that was sweeping Hidalgo County. It was encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain i z that is sometimes called "sleeping sickness." .Mosquitoes are the: most common source of sleeping sickness in humans. But they had been wiped out in a vigorous mosquito-contr- ol program launched after the area had been flooded by the Rio Grande earlier that Summer. , 7 EFOOHEIIOC |