Word: pinta
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Some hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans are blotched with a skin disease called pinta. Heretofore U.S. doctors have assumed that the continental U.S. was mysteriously pinta-proof. But in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Eugene Paul Lie berthal gave the first U.S. pinta report - three cases in Chicago. He believes that in the South there are many more pintados, whose disease has been wrongly diagnosed...
...Pinta does not hurt, does not make patients ill in the early stages, but: 1) it produces unsightly blotches; 2) patients usually have positive Wassermann and Kahn tests (their doctors are likely to tell them that they have a venereal disease); 3) anti-syphilis drugs help early pinta, but once the white spots develop, nothing restores the skin to normal; 4) the disease goes on & on (one of Dr. Lieberthal's patients has had it for twelve years...
...Pinta, a tropical skin disease, caused by fungi which settle in the epidermis, permanently blotch the skin with patches of greyish violet or red. When the sickness runs its course, dark men are streaked dead white, fair men dull blue, sometimes tinged with green. (Mr. Wilson first saw green and blue men on a Colombia farm after a "night out".) Neither painful nor fatal, pinta is serious because it disfigures, is very infectious. It can be checked with antiseptic drugs, especially chrysarobin, powder obtained from a tropical tree, which is an ancient remedy of Indian herb doctors. But only tattooing...
Furthermore, the common idea that the Nina and Pinta were open or half-decked boats is "preposterous." Nina, Columbus' favorite, was "one of the greatest little ships in the world's history." She drew only six feet of water, and sailed 25,000 miles under Columbus' command. Pinta was such a smart sailer that "Columbus became annoyed at a habit of Captain Pinzon in pressing on ahead when land was expected, in order to gain the reward." Morison guesses that she was about 75 feet long. Santa Maria was "somewhat" but "not very much" bigger than...
...they tried to rise above the 10,000-ft. peaks around them. They attempted to turn back. Then, eyewitnesses said, the three planes seemed to be blown together; there was a violent crash as they momentarily interlocked, a burst of flame. Like two stones the Santa Maria and Pinta fell to earth, crashed side by side in the bottom of a shallow creek. On fire, the Nina struggled a few seconds, crashed a few hundred yards from its companions. All seven occupants of the three planes were instantly killed, those in the Nina burned beyond recognition...