[doctom54]

From the NC Sate Epidemiology Branch

Although the disease was first definitively described over a century ago by Adolf Weil in Germany and the etiologic agent was discovered in 1915, NC occupies a prominent place in the history of leptospi-rosis. The work of Dr. Hugh Tatlock in the 1940s with an organism isolated from a patient later documented as Leptospira autumnalis, one of the “Tatlock agents,” led the way to eventually showing this to be the cause of “Fort Bragg fever.” The disease described by Tatlock (also called “pretibial fever”) included “moderate prostration, fever, splenomegaly, a rash localizing particularly on the ante-rior aspects of the legs, and a short course.” 2 This description falls into the mid-range of the wide spectrum of clinical manifestations seen with leptospirosis.