Lice & Urchins

Even Chile's courageous President Arturo Alessandri, "The Lion of Tarapaca," worried about body lice last week, bathed with unusual frequency and spurred Santiago health officials in their zealous efforts to stamp out a typhus epidemic.

Since lice are well known to transmit typhus, Santiago went in for city-wide delousing. Theatres were disinfected every night. So were dance halls, until Santiago authorities reflected that slow, intimate Chilean tangoes would be just right for spreading typhus. Abruptly all dance halls, billiard parlors and swimming pools in the capital were closed.

Fortunately the Chilean epidemic is typhus of a type milder than the type that sometimes scourges Europe. Over 100 Santiagoans had died last week, but hundreds were recovering when Valparaiso, chief port of Chile, clamored for protection. President Alessandri's typhus fight ers established delousing stations on all roads leading out of the capital under a presidential decree declaring a state of siege. At these barriers simple pedestrians and their clothing were thoroughly disinfected, not without loud protests. Wealthier Santiagoans passed through on certificates issued by their doctors.

Santiago's bootblacks and newsboys gave the most trouble. A decree ordered them deloused every eight days, forbade them to black shoes or sell papers without a delousing certificate. Santiago police, ruefully compelled to enforce this decree, found the urchins extremely intractable, spent the week chasing them across stately public squares, collaring them in side streets and alleys.

Only as the week closed were government offices and the Presidential Palace belatedlv deloused.

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