Wherry reported the infection as manifested by conjunctivitis with glandular involvement and due to handling infected wild rabbits.
Lake and Francis have reported that of six investigators from the Hygienic Laboratory working with this infection all have contracted the disease. There were fortunately no fatalities. Such an experience demonstrates the great infectivity of this virus and must lead to the conclusion that the few cases so far reported of the disease do not represent the importance of tularaemia in man. With a knowledge of the existence of such an infection and with satisfactory methods of laboratory diagnosis we shall probably have other reports of the infection. We now know that the ground squirrels of California and Utah, the jack rabbits of Utah and the wild rabbits of the middle west furnish important reservoirs of virus.
Pathology
In experimental animals we have lesions which cannot well be differentiated from those of plague. There is not sufficient data for a statement as to the pathology in man.
In experimental animals we have a definite bacteriaemia but in man the organism has only in rare instances been obtained from the blood.
Symptomatology
It has been difficult to determine the period of incubation but in one laboratory infection the disease set in seven days after the patient began tularaemia work. There do not seem to be any prodromata.
Fig. 71.—Temperature chart of a case of laboratory infection (tularaemia.)