Jaundice Water

The disease popularly known as jaundice (actually infectious hepatitis; jaundice is only a symptom) was the No 1 nuisance of World War II. It disabled 30,000 G.I.s in the Mediterranean Theater alone. Last week U.S. Army investigators reported that they had finally run down the disease to its most likely source, and found a way to combat it. The source: polluted drinking water.

Infectious hepatitis, which attacks the liver, is rarely fatal, but invariably puts its victims in bed for two to three months. It may be much more widespread than formerly supposed. Reason: most of the symptoms (headache, fever, vomiting) are those of influenza or any respiratory disorder, and some patients never develop jaundice (yellowing of the skin).

The clue to the disease's source was found not in the Army but in a youngsters' camp in the Pocono Mountains, where two summers ago 350 of the 572 campers came down with jaundice. Army doctors promptly seized on a made-to-order opportunity to investigate, eventually traced the infection to a camp well into which cesspools drained. With the help of conscienious objectors, who volunteered to drink from the well, doctors established that the disease was caused by an invisible organism, probably a virus, in the water.

The virus is not easy to kill; it resists the usual treatment of water with chlorine. But Major James Baty, the Army's chief sanitary engineer, last week announced a successful method: superchlorination with 15 times the normal concentration of chlorine. To make the water fit to drink, it then has to be dechlorinated with a neutralizer, sodium sulphite.

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