Bacteriology: New Venereal Disease

Spontaneous abortion in sheep and beef cattle seems an odd subject for study by a New York City pediatrician. But Dr. Alvin N. Eden of Wyckoff Heights Hospital has been studying it, and he thinks that his colleagues ought to do the same. The wriggly microbe, Vibrio fetus, which is one of the most common causes of animal abortions, he reports in the Journal of Pediatrics, is probably responsible for a similar, and hitherto generally unrecognized, venereal disease in man.

Grazing animals apparently pick up the infection from contaminated feed or water, after which the vibrios settle quietly in their genitalia...