FOOD POISONING

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 28, 3 February 1938, Page 18

FOOD POISONING

DRAMA OF OUT-BACK LIFE-

(From "The Post's" Representative:) SYDNEY, January 28.

Doctors were puzzled by a mysterious disease, which killed a man and infected Kis two nurses, in the remote bush hospital at Katherine (North Australia). Dramatically called to the outback, they diagnosed the infection, which it was feared might have been of a more serious nature than the usual tropical fever, as food poisoning. - f' Last week Thomas -Ekibui,, Darchy, manager of the "McArthur River station was suddenly laid, low by.the ill- - ness. His housekeeper, Gwenellion Black, a trained nurse, looked after him. Tne symptoms of the-Infection were unfamiliar, and' he became lower and lower. ' Alarmed, she.sent a black boy galloping 40 miles to Boorooloola settlement. From there Police Constable Heathcpck, by pedal wireless, radioed an SOS to Darwin, for Dr. Fenton, the flying doctor. His own wife, who is also a trained nurse, went out: to the McArthur River station. Darwin telephoned Dr.' Fenton at Katherine and he flew at once and brought back the patient and two nurses to ' "the Katherine Hospital."' The nurses had by this time developed the same symptoms as Darchy, who failed further and died. Dr. Cook, chief medical, officer of :the Northern Territory ,_ who was in touch by telephone at KatHerine with Dr. Fenton during the weekend, was mystified by the nature'of the illness. .He flew to Katherine, and Dr. Rupert Catalano, on his way to Darwin, left a north bound plane' at Katherine to help Dr. Fenton until Dr. Cook arrived. The' three .doctors conductedJ a post mortem examination and treated the two nurses. Now a laconic message has been received in Canberra that the "disease," which it appears, had affected .other white people .and some aborigines, was "simply fopdpoisoning.