Q fever. Never mind, for the moment, the origin of that name. The most notable thing about Q fever is that, even now in the age of antibiotics, for reasons related to its anomalous biology, it’s still capable of causing serious devilment. Psittacosis. Around the same time as Q fever emerged, in the 1930s, another peculiar bacterial zoonosis hit the news. This one also had links to Australia, but its scope was global, and it seems to have first reached the United States by way of a shipment of diseased parrots from South America. That was in late 1929, just in time for the Christmas season of
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