ifiNUAET 16, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



99 



reau of Standards, Pittsburgh, Pa. The agri- 

 Cultural department offers this year, January 

 19-31, some new courses in forge work and 

 carpentry. These courses will under the im- 

 mediate charge of Director Benedict, of the 

 mechanical engineering department. 



At the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- 

 ogy Dr. H. O. Taylor has been appointed to 

 be research associate in the research laboratory 

 of electrical engineering, and Francis Byron 

 Morton to be assistant in physics, in place of 

 r. I. Hunt, resigned. 



At Vassar College Dr. Elizabeth B. Cowley, 

 instructor in mathematics, has been made as- 

 sistant professor of mathematics. 



The governors of the Imperial College of 

 Science and Technology have constituted two 

 new chairs of chemistry, and appointed two 

 new professors — Dr. Jocelyn Pield Thorpe, 

 professor of organic chemistry, and Dr. James 

 C Philip, professor of physical chemistry. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



ON THE IDENTITY OF VERRUGA AND CARRION's 

 FEVER 



We are indebted to Dr. Richard P. Strong, 

 of the Harvard Medical School, for reopening 

 the question of the unity or duality of Car- 

 rion's fever and eruptive verruga, so termed. 

 Assisted by Dr. E. E. Tyzzer, he carried out 

 an interesting series of experiments at the bac- 

 teriological laboratory of the Institute of 

 Hygiene in Lima, from June to August, 1913, 

 in cooperation with Dr. Julio C. Gastiaburu, 

 the director of that laboratory. Some of the 

 details of the results obtained were presented 

 to the Eifth Latin American Medical Con- 

 gress in Lima by Dr. Gastiaburu on Novem- 

 ber 14, 1913, causing a great sensation in 

 Peruvian medical circles. It is not too much 

 to ■ say that this announcement has fallen like 

 a thunderbolt in Lima. The thorough prob- 

 ing of the problem which will undoubtedly 

 follow swiftly upon this reopening of the case 

 wiU certainly bring the truth to the surface 

 and settle the matter with finality. From the 

 entomological and protozoological points of 

 view, as well as from such clinical and other 



points of view as present themselves to the 

 writer, the following data seem to bear defi- 

 nitely upon this subject. 



Reasons why Carrion's fever and eruptive ver- 

 ruga (so-called) are respectively malignant 

 and henign forms of one disease: 



1. They have identically the same geo- 

 graphical distribution so far as known. 



2. They are connected by every possible 

 gradation of clinical symptoms. 



3. The bone pains which are characteristic 

 of the benign form often occur with marked 

 severity associated with such high tempera- 

 tures that the case must be diagnosed as 

 malignant or Carrion's fever rather than 

 benign or eruptive verruga (so-called). 



4. Carrion's fever is always followed by the 

 eruption, usually of the miliar but sometimes 

 of the nodular type, the latter being more dis- 

 tinctive of the benign form of the disease, thia 

 indicating the identity of the malignant and 

 benign forms etiologically. 



5. Infection by Plilehotomus verrucarum 

 from the same locality produces both in both 

 man and laboratory animals, sometimes giving 

 rise to one and sometimes to the other, appar- 

 ently according to the severity of the infection, 

 due to the number of the infective Phleioto- 

 mus concerned or to the degree of resistance 

 of the host infected. 



6. The bodies named Bartonia tacilliforme 

 by Strong and Gastiaburu are present in both, 

 their abundance being apparently in direct 

 ratio to the degree of fever exhibited at any 

 time in any given case of either, and they dis- 

 appear from the peripheral circulation of both 

 immediately before the appearance of the erup- 

 tion, though they may return if the course of 

 the eruption be interrupted by pyrexial relapse, 

 disappearing finally on the definite and unin- 

 terrupted sequence of the eruption. 



7. The bodies Bartonia hacilliforme are 

 quite evidently not organisms, but changes 

 wrought in the red cells by the activities of 

 the as yet undiscovered verruga organism, 

 these changes evidently being effected in the 

 bone marrow, as evidenced by the fact that the 

 more abundant the Bartonia bodies are the 



