flickr photo credits: (1) Serenae (2) bionicteaching (3) bionicteaching (4) keepps (5) Serenae
Five Card Story: Fire ant itching disease
a Five Card Flickr story by Jared created Oct 01 2012, 06:18:26 pm. Create a new one!
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Deep in some of the CDCs file cabinets lies the documentation of a Short lived disease known as the fire ant itching disease. Originally, it originated in the deep Congo rainforest in Africa where colonies of fire ants carried a previously unknown bacteria on the pitchers, or jaws, of it's worker ants. A group of American entomologists visited the area in the early 1900s and came across the colony of fire ants. One of the scientists was bit, for some reason his name was undisclosed in the document, and encountered a strong itchy rash on his left foot which he described as the feeling of thousands of ants crawling on his foot. Thinking it was an insignificant rash, the team dismissed it and departed for America on a clipper ship. His rash lingered on for a few weeks before dissapearing from his foot. In that time, a physician examined the rash and took a sample of a yellow puss inside of it which was teaming with an undocumented bacteria. After the rash had gone away from the victims foot, the disease was documented and then put into a cabinet for over 100 years with little concern of its reemergence.
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