Word: meningococcus
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Although meningitis can result from infection by any of several different viruses and bacteria, the most virulent form is caused by the meningococcus, Neisseria meningitidis. This comes in four different breeds known as types A, B, C and D, only one of which is usually implicated in an epidemic. But Brazilian microbiologists believe that types A and C are rampaging simultaneously in the current outbreak, and doctors favor administering vaccines against both in a single inoculation...
Thomas argues elegantly that it is when our bodies forget the importance of living symbolically with other organisms that we contract disease. Most bacteria are not dangerous to man. The man who catches a meningococcus, as the biologist emphasizes, is in considerably less risk of losing his life than the meningococcus unlucky enough to catch a man. It is man's overreaction to many germs, a sort of immunological overkill, that puts him at risk, since his weapons for fighting off bacteria are so powerful that they endanger him as much as they do invaders. Most people, for example...
...Colonel Ro'land Sigafoos, the base medical officer, was not taken by surprise. There are epidemics every few years in big camps; the Navy had had one only last year at San Diego (TIME, March 22, 1963). Sometimes, daily doses of sulfadiazine are a good preventive, but the meningococcus germs storming Fort Ord were of a type resistant to sulfas...
...dosage was supposed to clean out transient meningococci, the microbes that cause this form of inflammation of the brain covering. But for five weeks, sporadic new cases of meningitis kept cropping up. The Navy flew in Dr. Harry A. Feldman, the nation's top authority on the meningococcus, and the specialist from Syracuse, N.Y., ran blood tests on a sample of 20 recruits. He found that only eight of the boots had faithfully taken their tablets. The Navy was up against a perennial problem: too many people would rather take chances than take medicine...
...Center. From his symptoms-including stiff neck and a rash-the medics decided they were up against meningitis, inflammation of the protective sheathing of the spinal cord and brain. And among the many microbes that can cause meningitis, they identified the cause of Wilkowski's illness as the meningococcus...