THE MYSTERY OF "X."

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 63, 14 March 1918, Page 5

THE MYSTERY OF "X."

GERMS CARRIED IN THE AIR.

(Received 11.15 a.m.)

SYDNEY, this day. Scientific investigations into the mysterious "X" disease, which is still claiming victims, show that the germs are breathed in and carried by the blood to various organs, especially the brain, and burst through the little blood vessels, causing local inflammation; hut the patient is killed so rapidly through interference with the vital centres of the brain that there ie not time for the germs to fully develop in other areas. The disease is very severe, for 90 per cent of the victims die. It is confined to two or three months of the year, particularly January and February, and seldom attacks females, and never adult females.— (A. and N.Z. Cable.)

Considerable public concern baa teen manifested in the west and northwestern portions of New South Wales during the past month consequent on the appearance of "a new disease, ,1 which is accompanied by extraordinary mortality. Almost daily freeh cases of the disease are being reported to the central health authorities in Sydney, and strenuous investigation has been undertaken by them in order to discover the characteristics of the malady and how to deal effectively with it. Meantime the Board of Health has christened the new disease "X," having borrowed the algebraical term which denotes the unknown quantity. The disease, as far ac the Health Board can ascertain, does not seem to have ever appeared in any other part of the world; at least, there ie no record of its having done co. It first came under notice last year, when there were 60 cases reported in.a few months. Then it mysteriously disappeared until February of this year, when further outbreaks occurred, notably at Broken Hill. The disease, in its symptoms, closely resemblee cerebro-spinal meningitis, and technically it is closely allied to infantile paralysis, but it differs from the latter disease in that the lesion (or morbid changes), instead of being confined, as ii usual in infantile paralysis, to the spinal cord, is located in the brain. The health authorities etate that, while it is known that in infantile paralyeis the brain may be also affected, it is impossible to say at present whether "X" is really an unusually virulent form of that disease, or ■whether it is an entirely new disease formerly unknown to medical science. Steps are being taken to make "X" a notifiable disease, co that contacts may be segregated, and the whole medical faculty has been circularised with details of the symptoms of it, and what at present are considered advisable precautions to take to arrest it. "X" geems to have confined itself entirely to inland. districts. There have been no casts reported from the coastal areas. There are reasons, however, to suspect that a number of mild cases of the disease have occurred, and have not ibeen recognised. In some districts so heavy has been the mortality that practically every victim to the disease has died, and the health authorities state that the more they investigate the more they are satisfied that there is no question that "X" is a disease which has- never hitherto affected the human race.