Word: legion
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Disease detectives are still at work on the mysterious epidemic that killed 27 people and felled 128 others at the American Legion's Philadelphia convention in late July (TIME cover, Aug. 16). They have largely excluded all the seemingly probable causes (mostly microbes), and are moving on to an apparently almost limitless number of esoteric possibilities. Last week, as expert laboratory scientists and technicians in Philadelphia and at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta concentrated on chemical toxins as suspects, no one could yet offer a plausible let alone provable explanation...
Hoak went to bed that Sunday night without reaching state health authorities. On Monday morning, they called him. Having heard that several Legionnaires had entered a Williamsport hospital with symptoms of something that soon came to be known as "Legion Disease," an official in the state's division of communicable diseases asked Hoak if he was aware of an unusual number of illnesses among his colleagues. Hoak's reply confirmed the worst: there was an invisible, impersonal mass killer on the loose. The knowledge rekindled, despite all the advances of modern medicine, humanity's ancient memories...
...least one restaurant patronized by Legionnaires. A New York State couple who attended the convention had to be hospitalized. A hot line set up by Philadelphia city officials to handle requests for information logged up to 400 calls an hour. A few people canceled vacation plans and the Legion called off an excursion that was supposed to bring 600 boys and girls to the city...
...passing on the illness to their families and friends, and so the first terrible fears of a rampaging epidemic began to dissipate. The disease seemed to spare completely the large 41st International Eucharistic Congress of Catholics in Philadelphia last week (see RELIGION). But the mystery of what caused the Legion deaths remained to be solved, and until it was, no one could be sure the killer might not just as suddenly revive, reappear and strike in force again...
...into more exotic terrain. Tests also ruled out tularemia (rabbit fever), a deadly tropical disease known as Lassa fever, and Marburg disease, a viral disease from Africa. Further screening seemed to dismiss fungi as a suspect; no fungus is known to produce the fatally fulminating pneumonia typical of Legion disease...