RELATION OF THE INDIAN FORM OF RELAPSING FEVER 

 TO AFRICAN TICK FEVER/ 



By Richard P. Strong. 

 {From the Biological Lahoratorij, Bureau of Science.) 



In 1904 Manson/ after examining the blood of a patient from Gibraltar 

 suffering from her eighth paroxysm of relapsing fever, suggested, on the 

 ground of the unusually large number of relapses and the locality in 

 which the infection was acquired, that there might be several forms of 

 this type of disease due to different species or varieties of spirochsetaB. 

 Eoss and Milne ^ in the same year stated that it was possible there 

 might be more than one form of tick fever, and Sambon * suggested 

 that a spirillum which was so widely distributed and fostered by different 

 invertebrate hosts in different countries might be represented by a number 

 of more or less distinct varieties or species. In 1906 Novy and Knapp ^ 

 studied a case of relapsing fever in the United States, and on account 

 of morphological characteristics which they were able to detect in several 

 stained specimens of the spirochseta from their own case, and in those 

 of African spirochajtae obtained by them from the Liverpool School of 

 Tropical Medicine, concluded that relapsing fever and tick fever are 

 distinct. Tliey also based this claim upon the published experiments of 

 Dutton and Todd " and particularly upon those of Breinl and Kinghorn,^ 

 who found that the spirochseta of the tick variety was frequently fatal to 

 rats and mice and that in rats from three to four relapses occurred before 

 death. Novy and Knapp ® found that in the case of the spirochajta, 

 which they regarded as Spirillum ohermeieri, the infection in rats was of 

 shorter duration and that no relapses occurred. They also believed that 



' Read at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical Associa- 

 tion, February 13, 1909. 



^Brit. Med. Journ. (1904), 1, 538. 



'Brit. Med. Journ. (1904), 2, 1453. 



^Brit. Med. Journ.. (1905), 2, 1266. 



^ Journ. Am. Med. Ass. (1900), 46, 116; Journ. Infect. Dis. (1900), 3, 291. 



'Brit. Med. Journ. (1905), 2, 1259; Mem. Liv. School of Trop. Med. (1905), 

 17, 1. 



'Lancet (1900), 1, 068; Mem. Liv. School Trop. Med., 20, 01. 



* Lioc. cit. 



187 



