MEN WHO GAVE OFF SPARKS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14143, 15 June 1920, Page 3

MEN WHO GAVE OFF SPARKS.

NEW MYSTERY DISEASE. Medical men and scientists from Harvard University have been summoned to Dannemora Prison, Clinton, New Yo.rk State, to study extraordinary symptoms that have developed among two score of male prisoners, two of whom have since died, the others being in hospital. ’The bodies of the afflicted men appear surcharged with electricity. They are referred to by the doctors as “animated electrodes.” Sparks fly when their fingers come in contact with steel, and wjien they handle electric light bulbs and filaments quiver with energy. , Scraps of paper stick to their fingers like filings to a magnet. In some eases blindness developed, and it was at first thought that that might be the result of wood alcohol poisoning, but the best explanation scientists have to offer is that the patients have been poisoned by the germ “botulinus,” known under certain conditions to generate electricity. Officials are investigating a theory that tho’ germ was introduced in tinned salmon served to the, prisoners. Botulism, attributed to badly-prepar-ed canned food, attracted much attention in the sp.ring of 1918, but the symptoms were not those described in this dispatch. Dry mouth, drooping eyelids, and delirium were the, most noticeable.