A report on the production of tabardillo,or Mexican typhus fever,in monkeys

Abstract

It has been found that at least two species of monkeys, the Macacus rhesus and Cebus capuchinus, are susceptible to infection with tabardillo or Mexican typhus fever by direct inoculation with blood from human cases of this disease. 1 An attack of the disease in the monkey, produced by blood inoculation directly from man, induces a definite immunity to a subsequent inoculation with virulent blood. 2 Two monkeys, one a rhesus and the other a capuchinus, which were tested for their immunity 23 and 30 days respectively after the subsidence of their fever, were found to be immune to inoculation with large doses of virulent blood. Some of the same blood inoculated into two untreated monkeys produced, after an incubation period of eight days, a febrile curve similar to that of human cases of tabardillo. Blood taken from one of these animals on the sixth day of the fever and used for passage into another monkey, caused, after an incubation period of seven days, a similar febrile curve.

The blood of a Macacus rhesus infected from a human case was found to be infective for other monkeys on the fifth and sixth days of illness.