Psittacosis v. U. S.

Searching for the cause and cure of a disease is very much like driving a nitroglycerine wagon: it seems safe at the time but trouble may come any moment. Trouble came last week to some researchers in the U. S. Public Health Service's laboratory at Washington. Searching for the cause and cure of psittacosis (parrot fever), eleven of them came down with the disease. The laboratory had to be closed, leaving psittacosis a momentary victor over the U. S. Government.*

Prior to last week health officials had thought that contact with infected parrots was necessary to contract parrot fever. To explain the fact that three of the stricken researchers had not been within 30 ft. of a dead parrot, it was necessary to go off on a new tack. The new tack: parrot fever is extremely contagious.

One of the researchers. Harry B. Anderson, died before he could be treated with a new serum, made from the blood of psittacosis sufferers, which the laboratory had developed. If the others recover they have their own efforts to thank.

Following the death. Surgeon General Hugh S. Gumming, to protect other laboratory workers from the contagion, decided to move further psittacosis research to some isolated quarantine island along the Atlantic seaboard.

*Coincident with the closing of the laboratory, Acting Secretary of the Navy Ernest Lee Jahncke ordered all parrots off all U. S. ships of war.

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