Mystery Disease

Alarm on New Guinea Goldfields

A mysterious disease called variously “Chinese tick,” “bush tick,” and “Japanese river fever” has appeared in the Morobe goldfields area of New Guinea, and has been causing some alarm.

The disease develops, apparently, as a kind of fever, with symptoms like those of typhoid, and is almost invariably fatal.

Six deaths have occurred lately, including those of Messrs. Ned Hensley, A. E. Gibbs, Jack Martin and Reg. Ireland, and it is believed in Wau that they were killed by this strange disease. All the men who have contracted the disease had been working out in the jungle, near the Bulolo River.

The medical service, it is reported, is making urgent inquiry into the character of the disease and the circumstances sur rounding its appearance.