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Show Get New Data in Epidemic Fight Experts Risk Lives to Gain Useful Facts Checking Halifax Scourge. BOSTON. A dramatic, uncen-sored uncen-sored account of virulent epidemics which have been raging in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and which threatened for a time to cut the lifeline of Britain-bound supplies, has been revealed re-vealed here. With it was disclosed the heroic story of 11 American men and women, wom-en, members of the Harvard medical med-ical school research staff, who went to that port while it was infested with meningitis, diphtheria and scarlet fever and joined forces with local authorities in combating the , diseases. I This story can be written now be-I be-I cause the epidemics are under con-I con-I trol and because the Harvard expedition expe-dition has set up public health meas-j meas-j ures which make their recurrence unlikely. Moreover, in the battle, the expedi-. expedi-. tion gained scientific knowledge of the diseases and their conquest which is expected to render them far less dangerous than they have been. A report is being made to the surgeon sur-geon general of the United States public health service detailing the work of the expedition from its de- parture from Boston by plane on January 27 until its return four weeks later. Gain New Knowledge. Aside from the main technical theme, the report tells the story of li men and women risking their health and even their lives for the progress of medicine. Besides additional knowledge about scarlet fever, the report describes de-scribes a new technique for diagnosing diagnos-ing meningitis and a more powerful drug for combating it which offers a possibility of eliminating carriers, and an improved way for dealing with adult immunization against diphtheria. These advances were possible because be-cause Halifax was so ridden with infection in-fection that the Harvard expedition had available in four weeks material materi-al which normally might not have been encountered in four years. Doctors worked overtime as disease dis-ease mounted. Hospitals became so crowded that one turned a golf clubhouse club-house into an annex. Halifax was termed the perfect culture medium for epidemics. Diphtheria came first. It first struck early last fall and spread rapidly. Doctors were able to check the number of deaths with anti- toxin, but the sick lists climbed steadily. Cases Fall Abruptly. Harvard tests later showed that between 70 and 80 per cent ot the population was susceptible. The first step was collaborating with local officials in establishing daily, free, immunization clinics. Army and navy officials quickly ordered or-dered the same procedure for their men. Abruptly the number of cases fell. "From this experience and our experience ex-perience in the general situation," Dr. Mueller wrote in his report, "it is possible to formulate a procedure which seems to be reasonably valid in dealing with adult immunization against diphtheria if it should become be-come necessary in certain of our own military groups." Meningitis did not attain the prevalence prev-alence of diphtheria because Dr. Dingle used sulfadiazine, a relatively relative-ly recent addition to the sulfanilamide sulfanila-mide family, to fight it. Data on all three epidemics are now being studied in laboratories in the United States and the full importance im-portance of the Harvard expedition to Halifax will not be realized until the studies are completed. But even now, doctors agree, the record forms s brilliant chapter in modern medical history. |
