THE NEW DISEASE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 16820, 27 May 1919, Page 8

THE NEW DISEASE.

HISTORY OF SLEEPING SICKNESS. (Per Press Association;. WELLINGTON, May 26. With, ifgaid to the new disease lethargic eneepnaUtis,, thu© are, accoidmg tie the Health Department, t'\o 01 Mispicious easeb of the disease in Y* ellington The hospital bjinnlam-. ai 2 •vpt to lead to contusio 1 with Ciehiospina.' mening.tds, and in fact the first cases reported were notified vis "C.S.M., diagnosis uncertain." The disease, it wou.d appear, is some relation of poliomyelitis (.hfantile paralysis),- aud there is also a, possibility thrit it is a. first cousin to the mysterious '■• X" disease .reported in Australia last* year, if it is hoi the same sickness. v.. DrWatit, district health officer, this morning said that apparently the disease had oft|:n been associated' iviitli influenzal outbreaks. The earliest outbreak of which thero was any record was about 1712, at. Tubingen, in Germany, .when it went: under the name- i of sieving sickness...' After tihe 1889-90 pandemic of influenza., 111 1&90 there •were outbreak's of. .whatt'., was ap|>r,rant. v tus:Samo disease- in-northern Italy :niu Jditngaiy. : Tne disease was then known as "Nona," apparently .a popular car-.-rupt'-ion of: ' 'Cuma." Cases -were .repo-r cea, in rEtigUtnd last..year.-, Eivst.,-of al-' it was believed to ibe poisoning and was caued "Bpitulismus/'Vas it was thought ta.-s.be' due to tine bacillus botuanus founu m pork sausages etc. i Later inquiry ;aa-u; res-iarch .showed thajt this was not the case. A cable message from America a wa-'ik ago stated that.sleeping sickness was prevalent there. There is no record; from England of many cases being ineto with,there now being -due to the germ. The sickness is infectious/ but 116 ea«3s have been reported of more than ocie member of a 'household being affected in England, and tihe dogriae c-f moribn'My was not high. ; "* *■■ ,