Information Related to "Deadly Diseases: Again a Threat to Humanity?"
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by Jerold Aust
Saturday, Feb. 8, 1975, dawned cold and clear. Eleven-year-old Danny Gallant and his friend Dale trudged the foothills of the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A chilly wind pressed against the young boys' faces, but the warmth of the sun soon took the bite out of it. The boys had no particular goal; they just wanted to explore. They were, however, armed with sheath knives against the unexpected. The unexpected insidiously appeared that crisp winter morning.
Dale saw it first. Half hidden in a pile of rocks was a coyote, rigid in death. The two boys, excited about their find, quickly decided to skin it for its hide. Afterward they trudged home, triumphant. Their families admired the skin they so proudly displayed. Perhaps because Danny's mother wasn't home, the hide found a place inside his house.
By Tuesday the excitement of the wilderness trek wore off, and for Danny an unpleasant sequel was just beginning. He complained of a bad headache and that he felt weak. On Wednesday he stayed home from school, shaking from chills and pain in his right shoulder. At 5 o'clock Thursday morning, Danny woke his mother to show her the egg-sized, excruciatingly painful swelling in his right armpit. His parents took him to a medical center. It took several days to verify the illness: Danny Gallant had bubonic plague!
Danny's case was the first of the 1975 plague season. Matters got worse. It turned out to be the worst plague in half a century. Many wild animals perished from the disease, and each animal was a potential threat to domestic animals and humans.
Plague: still nearby, still deadly
Although the thought of bubonic plague seems extremely remote, it isn't. A decade after Danny's deadly encounter, plague-infected animals could be found in at least 40 percent of the continental United States, from the Pacific eastward into Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
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