Medicine: Malaria in Manhattan

A Bowery bum died of malaria in Manhattan. He must have just come from the tropics, reasoned Chief Medical Examiner Charles Norris, and casually noted that the derelict had been a narcotic addict. Another Bowery bum died of malaria, and another, and another. Dr. Norris called his assistants together, ordered: "There's a carrier loose down around Park Row. Watch for him."

"He's a dope," added Dr. Milton Helpern, one of Dr. Norris' assistants. Perspicacious Dr. Helpern had noticed that every dead malarial bum had been a drug addict. He visualized a huddle of men in Park Row which, once famed for its newspaper establishments, is actually a murky, musty street of pawnshops, stationery stores, clothing shops, and sodden lodging houses where for 25¢ a night a man can rent a bunk. In one of those hotels had lived three of the dead bums.

Dr. Helpern pictured the addicts passing a filthy hypodermic syringe from one to another. Impatient to flood their veins with heroin, they did not bother to sterilize the needle which transferred germs from one man's blood to another's.

Correction Hospital, where Manhattan segregates some addicts, ought to show some malaria picked up this way, reasoned Dr. Norris and sent an investigator there last week. Five cases of malaria showed up. None seemed to be the original carrier of the disease.

Other investigators prowled through Park Row and Bowery hotels. Last week the carrier could not be found, possibly because he was among the nine infected addicts who have died already.