In Cincinnati

Adjusting his quarter-inch spectacles and bending his good right eye toward a 29-page manuscript that had been nearly a year a-brewing, Dr. Howard Dixon Mclntyre, 41, Cincinnati neurologist, announced to the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine last week his observance of an entirely new type of encephalitis (sleeping sickness) which is currently epidemic in the Middle West. The new encephalitis, he reported, refused to fit into any of the categories of the disease already known, exhibited startling phases which he advised should force medical men to intensify their research into a disease about whose cause they know nothing certain.

Dr. Mclntyre's paper followed a week of accidental publicity for the disease. A few days earlier Thelma Johnston, 2, had died in convulsions at General Hospital only four hours after becoming ill. Deputy Coroner James N. Patterson pronounced death due to a "strange form of encephalitis." Eight hours before the paper was read, Jule Heard, four-month-old Negress, was rushed to the hospital dead and Earl Costello, 26-year-old Negro, was rushed there dying of an unknown malady which physicians were led to believe was the new encephalitis.

Newspaper stories of the three cases brought to the Academy meeting the largest crowd in many months.

Reading in a quiet monotone, Dr. McIntyre stated that 20 cases which he believed to be the disease had come to his attention in the year. Of these seven died; seven recovered completely; six recovered but suffered residual ailments. Choosing the 16 cases which seemed most certainly the new brain inflammation, he proceeded to read a complete history of each, to draw up a summary of the disease's aspects. He reported, in brief:

The presence of blood in the spinal fluid of eleven of the 16, indicating some form of inter-cranial hemorrhage.

In the five cases where no bleeding was noted, a marked increase in the globulin content of the spinal fluid was observed.

Somnolence was a "prominent feature" in twelve of the 16.

Double vision occurred in twelve.

Two monkeys injected with the bloody spinal fluid of victims showed (after one month of observation) no symptoms.

Cases were so radically distributed in social strata (a nun, a baker, a one-day-old child, a medical student), in type of employment and geographical location that both contagion and food-poisoning seemed ruled out.

Ending his report with a plea that physicians watch for and study the new disease and a promise that publication of his paper would follow, Dr. Mclntyre added a cheering word for the general public. "There is no use worrying about this thing. In view of our present knowledge it would be just as sensible to worry about being hit by lightning."

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