We had been married, Ricky and I, for two years (was it three?) and built a candy-box house on an island in Biscayne Bay (before the sixty sewers of Greater Miami belched the water sludge-thick) when she fell sick. Brucellosis, they called it, or undulant fever. In cattle, Bang's disease. The cows abort. They told us it was common everywhere in our fair land and caught from unpasteurized milk, or cheese, ice cream, or meat improperly inspected. The pasteurization laws in those days, they said, were altogether inadequate; inspection was bad; and cattle owners--they said further--were loath to lose their stricken animals. For a small bribe, we were told, they might be warned of impending inspection. Thereupon, they could drive the afflicted members of their herds into hiding while the government agent went by. They were in business (after all) and a buck is sacred; so are American sacred cattle sacred; let the public look after itself. Some of the cowmen don't believe the germ theory, anyhow; they think hygiene is one more racket like their own. And some, of course, like a certain proportion of the men in every business, would sell you leper's dung (neatly packaged--nationally advertised) if there were money in it. They sold the milk. We drank it. Some get brucellosis--some not. Some hundreds of thousands of free American citizens. It is one of the marvels of our Age. Some die. Some heal themselves, in due time. Others, like my Ricky, drag out the years in pain, debility, and sorrow. Fits of fever seize them. They take to their beds for days, for weeks, for months--racked and suffering and exhausted, sick at their stomachs, sick in their heads. The gram-negative bacterium is (they say) neurotoxic. It inflames the ganglia of the brain. The patient may expect not merely fever and pains, but constant anxiety, causeless fears, a collapse of the calmest temper, hysterias, heebie-jeebies, screaming meemies, spasms, and incomprehensible alarms. You must try to ignore it, Mrs. Wylie. Personality changes occur owing merely to the nature of your disease. Devote your (changed) self to a consideration of the change as physical phenomenology. You are lucky to get your trouble diagnosed. Hundreds of thousands of undulant fever sufferers spend their lives running from one doctor to another without avail. They're told they have tuberculosis, intestinal poisoning, brain tumor, neurasthenia, and bad dispositions. Medicine is--though the fact's not medicine's fault--very laggard about recognizing this common malady. Consider yourself lucky. Ricky threw into the tormented years her fortitude. She said she was fortunate. They knew the name of her ailment and they were doing all they could. Hospitals and clinics, X rays and tests, sulfas and antibiotics, vaccines and sterile sores--a little improvement, a red-hot localization and the hospital again. Coming fine! Another year or two and you should feel--pretty much your old self. Patience. Courage.