Animals: Unfortunate Fever

Rabbit fever, or tularemia, a plaguelike infection to which rabbits and squirrels fall prey, can be transmitted to man either by an intermediate host—louse or flea—or by direct contact with an infected animal. It first appears as an ulcerous spot on human skin which is followed by swollen glands, chills & fever, sometimes by death. Within an ace of death -by rabbit fever had come 23-year-old Adelaide Dawson, released last week from the Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital after two blood transfusions from persons who had recovered from the disease. Source of her infection, she thought, was not louse, not flea, but a rabbit's foot which her loving husband had bought for her in Denver, Colo, and which she had often stroked for good luck.