Death Rides a Cootie

During World War I the cootie was a joke to many people who had never been bitten by one. Even itching soldiers stoically made a joke out of it. On the Western Front, thanks to frequent delousing and other precautions, the cootie seldom brought anything worse than a comparatively mild infliction called trench fever. But to millions of Germans today as to other millions in many of history's wars, the cootie means horror and death in the form of typhus.

Napoleon, who lost 300,000 men in Russia, lost tens of thousands of them to typhus. On the Eastern Front last week Adolf Hitler, already suffering from the Russian winter, faced another of Napoleon's problems.

The louse feeds on human blood and abhors soap. But where there is no cleansing disturbance the louse flourishes&151;the female easily produces over 100 mature offspring in two months. Typhus epidemics begin when lice suck up typhus germs with the blood of infected human beings, carry the germs to others and infect them. The lice themselves eventually die of the disease they carry&151;after they have spread it among men.

The typhus germ is called Rickettsia prowazeki, after Typhus Researchers Howard Taylor Ricketts and Stanislaus Prowazek. In feeding, the infected louse bows its head, pricks the skin with sharp stylets for bloodsucking, and meanwhile often excretes Rickettsiae on to the skin. When a victim scratches his itching louse bite, he is apt to infect himself by rubbing Rickettsiae into the scratch.

An average of twelve days after infection the victim gets chills, fever, headache, back and leg pains. His pulse and breath grow rapid, his tongue white and furry, his face flushed, his eyes bloodshot. He vomits often, becomes delirious, sometimes maniacal. After three to five days, his dried skin shows angry rashes. His delirium increases until he lies unconscious, his tongue dry and brown, his pulse feeble. Often his temperature rises to 108-9DEG, and he dies. (In some epidemics 65% have died.) Typhus is frequently complicated by bronchitis, bronchopneumonia, gangrene, paralysis.

There is no known specific medical cure. Preventives include delousing by shaving the body and bathing with creosol soap; sterilizing clothes and bedclothes; vaccination, which may not immunize but usually lessens the severity of attacks and reduces mortality. Best treatment of typhus involves sponge baths, irrigations, a soft high-caloric diet (nasal feeding if a victim is too nauseated to eat), open air if the climate permits.

Adolf Hitler's eastern drive has left behind it a vast morass of filth and malnutrition. Figures published in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.'s Statistical Bulletin show that in Poland in 1940 typhus increased ten times over 1939, in 1941 three times over 1940. In London last week Anthony Eden told Parliament that typhus was epidemic from the Russian front through eastern and southeastern Europe. Lithuania and Rumania were reported full of it. The Warsaw ghetto, crammed with Jews by Nazi command, was said to be a hell of typhus. Elsewhere in Poland the Nazis were capitalizing on the disease with anti-Semitic posters. One, picturing a gigantic louse and a horribly caricatured Jewish face, was lettered simply JEWS&151;LICE&151;SPOTTED TYPHUS. At the same time the Nazis were said to be pressing into service all available Jewish doctors.

Germany's subversive underground radio reported that the disease had spread west ward as far as Berlin. The British radio told of a Nazi questionnaire sent to directors of Berlin shelters for foreign workers. In part it read: "Are there vermin in the camp, particularly lice? Who last exterminated lice and when?" British reports also said that normal travel between Germany and the eastern occupied zones had been suspended. Alarmed by news that typhus was also increasing in Spain and North Africa, even the British Government called medical conferences.

German Army medicine is presumably as efficient as most other things about the German forces. But even as the efficient Germans have suffered setbacks from the Russians, they are now suffering setbacks from typhus&151;and each enemy's success makes the successes of the other easier.

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