154 
Pingelap Atoll, Caroline Islands November 25, 1972 
We have spent another lazy day on this hot atoll, but it has been 
profitable both from the point of view of our work and of establishing better 
rapport with the people and friendship with the children. In a couple 
of dozen medical consultations at the dispensary I went through many mundane 
complaints from backache to chronic osteoarthritis, but eventually a large 
diffuse non~nodular goiter in a woman in her late 30' s appeared, with a six 
year history of the goiter. She is one of four goiters in Pingelapese 
women. They are not obviously closely related as far as I have yet obtained 
from their genealogies. But they are quite likely distantly related. 
A rudimentary external ear in a school boy, with the canal and drum 
OK, one boy with cryptorchidism and one with a hernia, and a few children 
with small, hairy nevi of a few cm. diameter are all of the other anomalies 
I have found in addition to the achromatopsia, which is the genetic disease 
that has brought medical attention to this atoll and the reason why we are 
here. A few school boys have large patches of tinea and one severe tinea 
cruris, but there is not the generalized skin tinea we see in the BSIP and 
New Hebrides in anyone. The children are, in general, wonderfully healthy 
with clear skins, good teeth, and little lymphadenopathy . 
We have now found that Dr. Carr will be finished with his work on Monday, 
and thus we shall sail back to Ponape Monday evening. This curtails much of 
what I had planned to do at the school during the week, but we shall have had 
enough work done and experience on Pingelap by Monday afternoon to have made 
this a very valuable sojourn. 
There are some 600 to 700 people on the atoll. There are far more 
Pingelapese living on Ponape in two settlements, one called Sokes and another 
newer one established by the U.S. Trust Territoryship, called 
Mbaginta'o has found a woman here on Pingelap whose mother was Pingelap- 
ese and whose father was a German administration police sergeant from Manus 
Island in what is now Territory of Papua and New Guinea. This marriage took 
place in the days of the German administration when Rabaul was the center 
of German South Pacific activity, and German ships sailed often between 
Manus in the Admiralties and Rabaul and Yap, Ponape, and other Micronesian 
islands. Thus in those days mixed Micronesian Melanesian marriages were far 
more likely than since then. This family has taken him under their wing, and 
he has been given great hospitality by them. Tonight they are holding a real 
party for him. 
When Don, Ivan and I boarded the ship tonight at 4:15 I found a radiogram 
waiting for me from Paul. It astounds me with the report that all the clots 
carried out by Raymond Roos have been received in good shape by Kirk in Can- 
berra, and that all the sera and virus isolation specimens are at NIH in -20 
and -70 C storage, respectively, also in good shape. This speed of delivery 
and acknowledgement, and a success in shipment I had haddly anticipated, and 
it encouraged me to an enormous effort to still get off the remaining saliva, 
sera, and other specimens in good condition. We shall have a great deal of 
real work to do in Ponape, and I am not adverse to getting there a bit early. 
