JHE VERDICT OF GUILTY of feigned illness
unless proved innocent, or a diagnosis of neu-
rosis, continues to. be the common fate of pa-
tients suffering from chronic brucellosis. It is
the purpose of this communication to point
out that the evidence on which the damag-
ing judgments are made is faulty. Because of
the large number of patients involved in one
sweeping indictment, the unreliability of the
evidence is more obvious than ever before in
the recent reports on 16 cases by Trever,
Cluff, Imboden, and others.“* The patients
were Government employees in the bacteri-
ological laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md.,
where studies on Brucella melitensis and Br.
suis were in progress. Altogether 60 em-
ployees contracted brucellosis between 1945
and 1957. In a follow-up study made on 24
patients in whom the infection had been con-
tracted four to eight years previously, it was
found that in 16 patients the disease was pro-
longed for one to eight years. The authors
state that they classified as having chronic
brucellosis ‘all patients with complaints of
malaise, fatigue, myalgia, arthralgia, backache,
-or feverishness for a period of one year or
longer beyond the acute illness, unassociated

with bacteremia, changing serological titer, omcz

physical abnormalities.”*

Evans,

Alice C. Chronic Brucellosis:

the Unreliability of Diagnostic

Tests.

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN

MEDICAL WOMEN"S ASSOCIATION. V.16

(12), pp. 942-945, December 1961.