Psittacosis

Dr. Hollister reports a case of psittacosis in a caretaker of a pet shop in California. The patient was exposed to 12 psittacine birds in the shop. She became ill with a slight cough, pain in chest, and fever. The illness was at first diagnosed as virus pneumonia. The complement fixation test on a blood specimen taken 6 days after onset of illness was positive for psittacosis in a dilution of 1:8. A specimen taken 1 month after onset was positive in a dilution of 1:32. Laboratory tests on 3 birds by animal inoculation were not complete at the time of this report but it was stated that the second passage was negative.

Shigellosis

Dr. J. E. McCroan, Jr., Georgia Department of Public

Health, reports an outbreak of shigellosis involving 44 of 121 boys attending a mountain camp. Clinical diarrhea resembling shigellosis had been common in the area for 6 months, but the only traceable contact with the local population was through the water supply. This had apparently been contaminated by loggers who had illegally established themselves on the camp watershed. Lightning caused failure of an automatic chlorinating apparatus approximately 1 week before the outbreak and manual operation of the system thereafter gave very uneven results. Shigella flexneri type 6 was isolated from 15 campers and from an unrelated patient in a local hospital. The earliest case had its onset 6 days before the modal period of onset. The camp nurse apparently contracted the disease by contact. Repair of the chlorinating apparatus was followed by cessation of the epidemic.