Word: vibrio
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...inhuman." By "they" he meant Communist authorities of Red China, who had a cholera epidemic for months in Kwangtung province, around Canton, and had tried to keep news of it from slipping through the cracks in the Bamboo Curtain. They could not keep the tiny microbe of cholera, Vibrio comma, from slipping through with refugees escaping to Hong Kong or to the nearby Portuguese islet colony of Macao...
Cholera is spread by any means that gets Vibrio comma from the feces of one victim to the digestive tract of the next-chiefly contaminated water and food. To keep the disease out of other parts of Asia, shipment of fresh fruits and vegetables into or out of Hong Kong was banned. In the Philippines and Formosa, less than two-hour flights away, raw food from Hong Kong was seized and burned. The Philippines, which have a heavy, regular and effective program of cholera vaccination, began giving booster shots but reported no cases. Formosa hurriedly got out its needles...
...Discovery of the microbe that causes a disease is not necessarily the most important factor in halting its ravages. Dr. John Snow checked a cholera outbreak in London in 1854 merely by having the handle removed from the Broad Street pump that was gushing contaminated water. Then the cholera vibrio was found, but volunteers have guzzled billions of them without getting sick-and now the disease, if it develops, can be treated simply by replacing body fluids, without serums or antimicrobial drugs...
Having overcome this and other transportation problems, Snedaker had to meet still another: fear that a magazine from Egypt would transmit the cholera vibrio. To clear up this misapprehension, Egypt's Ministry of Public Health satisfied itself that a cholera vibrio could exist no more than three hours on a diet of TIME - or any other periodical. This fact was duly spread by the Egyptian press, and TIME continued to move over the Egyptian border by special truck - giving the vibrios plenty of time to expire...
Caused by comma-shaped bacteria known as Vibrio or Spirillum cholerae, which dwell in sewage-contaminated water, cholera drains body tissues of their fluids, causes intense vomiting, diarrhea and violent muscular spasms. More than a third of its victims shrivel up, turn dark grey or violet, die, sometimes within a few hours...