Barber Bug Fever

Three puffy-faced, feverish children caused great concern near Panama City last week. They were the first cases seen in that region of a tropical disease variously called Barber Bug Fever, Chagas' Disease, Brazilian Trypanosomiasis. The disease spreads very fast. Victims who do not die become sleepy idiots.

Cause of the disease is a trypanosome, protozoon which under the microscope resembles an auger. Two kinds of trypanosomes are indigenous to Africa, another kind to South America. The African types, borne by the tsetse fly, cause African sleeping sickness,* which kills 10,000 to 20,000 natives yearly. The "barber bug," a voracious Brazilian insect, is chief transmitter of the parasites in South America.

Dr. Carlos Chagas and the late Dr. Oswaldo Cruz of Rio de Janeiro traced the disease in Brazil. The "barber bug" sucks the blood of armadillos and other rodents infected with the local trypanosomes. Then the bug bites humans, depositing the trypanosomes in the wound. The parasites twist through the blood, causing fever and other malaise. By and by they drill into the heart and other muscles and the thyroid and adrenal glands, bone marrow and brain, where they change their form and multiply. Their spreading through the heart muscle may cause death. The adrenal attack colors the skin bronze. The thyroid infection causes an idiocy.