Legion Fever

Disease detectives are still at work on the mysterious epidemic that killed 27 people and felled 128 others at the American Legion's Philadelphia convention in late July (TIME cover, Aug. 16). They have largely excluded all the seemingly probable causes (mostly microbes), and are moving on to an apparently almost limitless number of esoteric possibilities. Last week, as expert laboratory scientists and technicians in Philadelphia and at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta concentrated on chemical toxins as suspects, no one could yet offer a plausible let alone provable explanation.

Toxicologists have already worked on phosgene, herbicides and pesticides, and carbon tetrachloride, at least 16 metals and many of their compounds --even the paint on pencils that might have been used as swizzle sticks. For a few days nickel carbonyl (a versatile industrial chemical) was a prime suspect, but the first laboratory tests proved useless because of contamination. Some unofficial observers speculated that diazomethane, a gas used in making plastics, might have been spread around in some mysterious way.

"Sabotage is an easy possibility to consider," said Dr. Lewis Polk, Philadelphia's acting health commissioner, "but there is no evidence to lead us to that conclusion." At week's end no conclusion was in sight.

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