Medicine: Valley Fever

One of the most stubborn of California's public health problems is the high incidence of coccidioidomycosis ("valley fever," "desert fever") among farmhands, sheepherders and oil workers of the San Joaquin Valley. Although coccidioidomycosis was first recognized in 1893, it was not until last June that a complete picture of the course of the disease was presented to physicians. Last week, at the San Francisco meeting of the Society of American Bacteriologists, Dr. Ernest Charles Dickson of Stanford Medical School, pioneer worker in valley fever, gave the first public, comprehensive account of the disease...