Medicine: Detroit's Rats

Last week Detroit's Health Commissioner Henry Frieze Vaughan asked his city council to offer a bounty of three cents for every dead rat delivered to the Department of Public Works (garbage). Special employes of that department killed 900,000 Detroit rats last year, expect to kill 2,000,000 rats this year. But Health Commissioner Vaughan wanted to get the 2.000.000 killed in a great hurry, for an epidemic of infective jaundice was spreading in Detroit. Twenty-two children had contracted the disease. One, Donald Siegle, had died.

A serpentine germ, Leptospira icterohemorrhagiae, causes the disease, affects the spleen and liver, yellows the eyes and skin, raises temperature, is not often fatal. Donald Siegle's pet dog had an attack of jaundice a fortnight before the child died, and may have transmitted the germ. But in the beginning, Dr. Vaughan knew, rats were responsible. Every tenth rat in any community harbors Leptospira icterohemorrhagiae, with no inconvenience to itself, but with grave trouble for man or beast who eats, drinks or touches food fouled by it.