Rickettsialpox

HISTORY New York City holds many distinctions, but among the more unusual was its role in the discovery of the first and only known mite-borne spotted fever rickettsiosis. In February 1946, Benjamin Shankman, a New York City physician, evaluated an 11-year-old boy named Edmund Lohr Jr. from the Regency Park housing development in the Kew Gardens section of the borough of Queens. The child had a high fever, a papulovesicular lesion on his back, and axillary lymphadenopathy. Within the next several days, he developed a diffuse rash and his temperature rose to 40.5°C. Despite therapy with penicillin, the child remained ill for approximately one week. His recovery was complete, but during the next three months, Shankman saw approximately 20 additional patients from Regency Park with the same mysterious illness (1,2). By early summer, Shankman and several other clinicians, including Leo Sussman, Harry Zeller, and Joan Daly, had identified approximately 100 cases of the disease, referred as “Kew Gardens Mystery Fever” by local newspapers (1,3,4).