Month: May 2020

In the 1970s, an epidemic of mysterious arthritis-like symptoms began spreading among children in the lushly wooded area around Lyme, Connecticut. Scientists traced the cause to tick bites and named it Lyme disease, but why it had suddenly appeared there was a mystery. Similar symptoms had been documented on Long Island, New York, years before. Doctors there called it “Montauk spider bite” or “Montauk knee.” It would take until 1990 before scientists found museum specimens of ticks from Long Island and were able to connect the same tick-borne bacteria to both locations and suggest how Lyme disease might have started its modern spread. As a researcher who studies how disease travels based on geography, I have been following Lyme disease’s spread for nearly four decades. Over that time, Lym...

In the 1970s, an epidemic of mysterious arthritis-like symptoms began spreading among children in the lushly wooded area around Lyme, Connecticut. Scientists traced the cause to tick bites and named it Lyme disease, but why it had suddenly appeared there was a mystery. Similar symptoms had been documented on Long Island, New York, years before. Doctors there called it “Montauk spider bite” or “Montauk knee.” It would take until 1990 before scientists found museum specimens of ticks from Long Island and were able to connect the same tick-borne bacteria to both locations and suggest how Lyme disease might have started its modern spread. As a researcher who studies how disease travels based on geography, I have been following Lyme disease’s spread for nearly four decades. Over that time, Lym...

In the 1970s, an epidemic of mysterious arthritis-like symptoms began spreading among children in the lushly wooded area around Lyme, Connecticut. Scientists traced the cause to tick bites and named it Lyme disease, but why it had suddenly appeared there was a mystery. Similar symptoms had been documented on Long Island, New York, years before. Doctors there called it “Montauk spider bite” or “Montauk knee.” It would take until 1990 before scientists found museum specimens of ticks from Long Island and were able to connect the same tick-borne bacteria to both locations and suggest how Lyme disease might have started its modern spread. As a researcher who studies how disease travels based on geography, I have been following Lyme disease’s spread for nearly four decades. Over that time, Lym...