LETHARGIC ENCEPHALITIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17635, 27 May 1919, Page 5

LETHARGIC ENCEPHALITIS

HEALTH DEPARTMENT ALERT. DISEASE NOTIFIABLE. CP» Unitkd Pjussb AsaociATioK.) WELLINGTON, May 26. Regarding the new disease, " lethargic encephalitis," the Minister of Health said today that the department had been watching indications of it • ever since the beginning of the month. On the Ist of the month Dr Watt. District Health Officer at Wellington, forwarded a report to the Chief Health Officer, and on May 5 Dr Ohesson, District Health Officer at Chnstchurch, sent a report concornin<r a case at Alcaroa. It had now been determined to declare the disease notifiable, and tne necessary steps had been taken. The department is issuing a bulletin for the information of hospital boards, medical superintendents, and the medical profession generally, containing information from one of the reports of the British Health Department. The infeciivity of the disease is low. There are, according to the Health Department, two or three suspicious cases of disease in the Wellington Hospital. The symptoms are apt to lead to confusion with cerebro-spinal meningitis, and in fact the first cases reported were notified as "cerebrospinal _ meningitis-; diagnosis uncertain." The disease, it would appear, is some relation of poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis), and there is also a possibility that it is first cousin to the mysterious "X" disease reported in Australia last year, if it is not the same sickness. Dr Watt, District Health Officer, this morning said that apparently, the disease had often been associated w'th influenza outbreaks. The earliest outbreak of which there was any record was about 1712, at Tubingen, in Germany, when it went under the name of "sleeping sickness." After the 1889-90 pandemic of influenza, in 1890 there were outbreaks of what was apparently the same disease in Northern Italy and Hungary. The disease was then known as " Nona," apparently a popular corruption of "Coma." Cases were reported in England last year. First of all it was believed to be poisoning, and was called Botnlisirms, as it was thought to bo due to the bacillus botuHnus, found in pork sausages, etc. • Later inquiry and research showed that this was not the case. A cable message from America a week ago stated that "sleeping sickness." was prevalent there. There is no record from England of many cases met with thero now being due to tho germ. The sickness is infectious, but no cases have been reported of more than one member of a household being affected. In Erraland the degree of mortality wae not high