Medicine: Toxoplasmosis

Toxoplasmosis is a "new" disease, though African rodents and people have probably suffered from it since germs began. It often kills its victims soon after the first appearance of symptoms—rash, fever, lung infection, blindness and, in children, convulsions. But there was good news about toxoplasmosis in last week's Journal of the A.M.A.: Harvard's Drs. David Weinman and Robert Berne have proved that sulfapyridine cures the disease in 95 out of 100 mice even in very late stages of the disease.

Until 1914, doctors were not sure that toxoplasmosis was a separate ailment, until the mid-'30s were not sure they could recognize it. Diagnosis is made by i) symptoms, 2) testing a patient's blood, 3) finding the malarialike Toxoplasma parasite in the tissues of a dead patient. In the U.S., toxoplasmosis is still a medical collectors' item—a lethal rarity.