Look Homeward, Virus

When Parasitologist Ernest Carroll Faust took over Tulane's Tropical Medicine Department in 1938, it consisted of himself and two assistants. In 1941 the Rockefeller Foundation, mindful of the epidemic threats of global war, gave it $200,000. With this money and contributions from the American Foundation for Tropical Medicine, Inc., Eli Lilly Co. et al., a full-size school is now in the making.

Last week its faculty of eight was working overtime, with 258 undergraduates and a constantly varying number of postgraduates. The fear that inspired this activity is that U.S. citizens, returning from far-off fronts, may bring home a host of new, dangerous or repulsive diseases. Among the less familiar ones: African sleeping sickness, relapsing fever (a periodic fever transmitted by bedbugs), schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, trypanosomiasis (all three, parasitic infestations), yaws (a type of stubborn skin sore indigenous to the tropics). Says Dr. Faust: fortunately, most tropical epidemics are "not like flash floods, but like slowly mounting river stages from spring thaws, giving ample time for tightened safeguards." In Dr. Faust's opinion the three diseases that need most watching are:

> Tropical malaria (full name: malignant tertian malaria), the most deadly form of the disease (TIME, Feb. 1). Right now, U.S. mosquitoes are free of it.

>Filariasis, a worm infestation, not usually deadly, but bad for morale. Some marines in Samoa got it. In a man's blood, the filariae become very slim worms from one to two inches long, may do little harm; but if they plug lymph-gland ducts, may cause elephantiasis (huge swellings) in scrotum or legs. For some unknown reason the filariae rarely appear in the circulating blood except between the hours of 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. The larvae are carried by ordinary U.S. mosquitoes. As there is no cure for the disease, the only recourse is mosquito control. The only U.S. area infected at present is Charleston, S.C.

> Amoebic dysentery. Men who are apparently cured may actually be carriers and, especially if they are food handlers, cause many outbreaks.

Good Neighbor Doctors. Tulane does not claim to be a great research school (tropical disease research goes on at many Government-financed laboratories). Tulane's chief interest is in preventive tropical medicine. Matter-of-fact Dr. Faust says the first step in protecting the U.S. is to prevent soldiers abroad from getting tropical diseases, the second step is to prevent the diseases from spreading. Most Tulane postgraduates are men strategically placed to do something about tropical-disease prevention: they are either 1) Army doctors or 2) civilian doctors who teach in other medical schools (their tuition is paid by the Government).

Tulane also gets the Latin American doctors who used to go to Germany for instruction. Last fortnight 24 Latin Americans and one U.S. doctor began a 21-week course partly financed by scholarships from Nelson Rockefeller's committee and the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau. The doctor students will study tropical dis eases in Charity Hospital and local Army & Navy hospitals. They will also work at the nearby leprosarium, the New Orleans ships' quarantine service, the Mississippi River waterworks, the tropical medicine school's museum (which is full of pre served specimens, of disease-carrying animal life, most of them collected by DJU Faust), the humid insectary where Tulane keeps its bugs in biting condition.

To acquaint students with more diseases than those occurring in New Orleans, Tulane has made a reciprocal arrangement with the Mexican Health Department, under which a joint field training station will be set up at Boca del Rio, Vera Cruz. There, beginning in February, both Tulane and Mexican students will see patients and visit their homes to learn about the conditions fostering the diseases.

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