KLEVEN BLUE MEN

by Berton Roueche ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

From the New Yorker these annals of medical detection have the fascination of their assiduous inquiry into strange symptoms and uncommon manifestations and the drama- in which disease is often the killer- begins with some enigmatic circumstances. A mortality in a city hospital is traced to some raw pork; three victims of typhoid fever alert the vigilance of the New York Public Health Bureau (from whom most of this material derives) to a source of infection which resulted from a game of wild Indians and a stopped up drain pipe; an outbreak of rickettsialpox, the newest of known diseases, ends with the identification of a mite by an enthusiastic exterminator; eleven elderly men turn blue and a cafeteria where sodium nitrate has been used for salt provides the common contact; a man from Mexico revives an old scare, smallpox, and leprosy is once again ""a lonely road"" for one of its victims; a needle provides a lasting surcease from care for one of its users- a heroin addict -- when tetanus results. These and others provide a dossier of afflictions and infections which arouse doubt and dread but are traced to their source with precision, patience and enterprise, none of which is lost in the transmission here.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1953

Categories: NONFICTION