Donna Mae's Plague

In California's far northern Siskiyou County last week little Donna Mae De Rose, 2½, was sick in bed. Hers was no ordinary childhood disease. She had bubonic plague—the first case reported in the U.S. since last year when two boys in the same county died of the disease (TIME, Sept. 8, 1941). She had probably caught it from ground-squirrel fleas while playing in the hay in her father's barn.

But Donna Mae is lucky—she is the first U.S. plague case to be treated with sulfadiazine and she will probably recover. Her doctor, Albert Newton of Yreka, tried it on the advice of Dr. Karl Meyer who has cured plague-infected animals with it in his University of California laboratory. (The drug has also been used on human plague in South America.)

Her condition under sulfadiazine treatment: Her fever rarely goes above 100; after a month her bubo (plague sore) is healing; her appetite is fair; she plays with her dolls and, says Dr. Newton, "she looks good." But Donna Mae is not cured yet: when Dr. Newton tries cutting down the sulfadiazine, her fever shoots as high as 104.