Jaundice Rampage

From Army camps and hospitals for the past three months have come rumors of a mysterious epidemic of jaundice. (One rumor: 1,500 jaundiced men in famed Walter Reed Hospital.) Last week War Secretary Henry Stimson was ready to talk. Jaundice had indeed attacked the armed forces. There have been 62 deaths, 28,585 hospital cases--4,528 of them overseas. Mr. Stimson hastily added that the disease is not contagious nor dangerous to the civil population. He could not say definitely what the disease is nor what causes it. (Jaundice, usually thought of as a disease, is really a symptom--coloration of the skin by bile pigments. When a man has jaundice, his doctor has still to figure out whether he has a liver disease, an intestinal upset, a blood disorder.)

The True Story. In early April, soldiers began to come down with jaundice in such numbers that Army doctors and civilian experts on the Army's Epidemic Control Board began frantically searching the cause. Along with yellow skin went nausea, nervousness, lack of appetite, constipation. Sometimes a soldier would be out of kilter for six weeks. Highest-ranking sufferer: Lieut. General Joseph Stilwell, who came down with it after his famed foot march across Burma mountains.

The experts finally decided that the disorder might be connected with the Army's inoculation against yellow fever. (To those who jumped to the conclusion that the disease was yellow fever itself, the doctors pointed out that yellow fever is violent, with a 10% to 85% mortality, while the mysterious ailment was relatively mild.) The doctors ordered the Army to shift to a new batch of vaccine.

It was taking soldiers anywhere from a few weeks to four months after inoculation before they came down with jaundice. (Incubation period for yellow fever: three or four days.) Therefore, even after the suspect vaccine was discarded, the number of cases was expected to increase for a while, as the number of men inoculated had also increased. Soldiers could be expected to come down in July. They did.

How Come? The doctors went to work meanwhile to figure out what was the matter with the vaccine. So far they have little to report. The vaccine, provided by the Rockefeller Foundation since 1936, consists of yellow-fever virus rendered harmless in the laboratory. The 1/2cc ampules must be kept in frozen storage, must not rise above 37DEG F. before use. There are three possible causes for the trouble: 1) the Army slipped up on vaccine handling; 2) the toned-down virus sometimes made people sick; 3) this particular batch had been contaminated by another germ.

The situation was further clouded by the fact that a few of the Army's civilian office workers also got jaundice. And the careful Navy, which was inoculating with another batch of Rockefeller vaccine, at first proudly let it be known that there were no Navy cases, later admitted that a few inoculated men did--er--turn yellow. There have also been reports of a similar disease among the Russians on the Eastern Front, and the Russian Army does not inoculate for yellow fever.

As yellow fever is infinitely worse than mild jaundice, the Army is continuing the inoculations--with a new batch of vaccine. As far as Secretary Stimson knows, no soldier inoculated with the new vaccine batch has yet become ill. The long incubation period is not quite over, but Secretary Stimson thinks the jaundice is checked. Says he: "It has been a baffling and difficult case."

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