CLINICAL AND LABORATORY STUDY OF THIRTY-ONE PATIENTS WITH HEMORRHAGIC FEVER

Abstract

INTRODUCTION IN THE summer and fall of 1951, an acute febrile illness complicated by hypotension, widespread hemorrhage, and renal insufficiency occurred in epidemic proportions among United Nations troops in Korea. At first, the slight resemblance to Weil's disease suggested that the illness was a form of leptospirosis; however, this possibility was removed as the result of negative serological and dark-field examinations for Leptospira and the absence of any severe hepatic involvement. Craig,¹ Takami,² and Mayer³ in searching the Japanese and Russian literature found that both Japanese and Russians had encountered the same disease periodically since 1935 in Manchuria. The Japanese had labeled it "Manchurian fever" or "Songo fever," and the Russians had descriptively named it "epidemic hemorrhagic nephrosonephritis." Both the Japanese and the Russians claimed to have isolated a tranmissible agent by animal inoculation. They also described a mite as the vector and a field mouse as