PSITTACOSIS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3463, 31 March 1930, Page 2

PSITTACOSIS.

The (report of human cases of “parrot fever.” or psittacosis, is interesting alul perhaps important to public health, but it is not true to say, as some of the dispatches do, that this disease has been hitherto unknown in the United States, says the New York HeraldTribune. On the contrary, Dr G. McOlintock, of Now York City, reported five years ago what amounted to a small-scale epidemic of the disease originating in a shipment of parrots and extending from them to human beings. Dr A. P. Thompson, of Birmingham, England, recently reported a series of cases, many of which, as usual, were fatal; lor this infection is far moire daugepoiis in-human beings than in the birds.

Although this germ is probably an old one' in ' parrotlsT'tuid perhaps in human beings also', it was not until the wtbtefi.M)l 18P& iicPansv that physicians gave it marked attention. Paris was then just recovering from an epidemic of influenza. The cases of severe and fatal fever which began appearing in the fall tit first \wero mistaken for a. recurrence of the more familiar disease, bid several Parisian experts, notably Professor Dnbief, soon perceived that parrots, kept as pets were connected in some manner with these new “inllnenza'’ cases. It was but a few weeks thereafter when Lite real nature o/, the disease was made clear and its germ isolated. This germ, it is now believed, is closely related to those which cause the more prevalent varieties ol “food sickness.” disorders once classes • under the now abandoned term ol “ptomaine poisoning.’' There seems to be a remote relationship, too, to the better known bacillus which accounts lor typhoid fever. This last similarity is clinical as we 1 ! as bacteriological, for the symptoms of the disease in human beings resemble typhoid fever complicated by a germ infection of the .lungs resembling pneumonia. In parrots the germ seems to confine its efforts largely to the digestive organs. In human beings the germ's attacks centre more in the respiratory organs than in the digestive ones. .Fatal cases nearly always-end,

case reports show, as a variety of pneumonia. It is probably not to he expected that llit- cases reported will result in any widespread epidemic, for tin; germ seems really not, much at home in this climate or in the human hotly. Yet it is north remembering that a sick parrot is an object of danger, not to he coddled dr approached closer than may In- necessary, and that a mysterious typhoid-like fever in beings who have handled sick parrots is a similar danger sign by no means to he temporised with or ignored.