The first recorded case of the disease came and went, almost unnoticed, as a bad but nonfatal fever afflicting a local farmer. This was during the wet season of 1959. More such illnesses, and worse, occurred in the same region over the following three years. Symptoms included fever and chills, nausea and vomiting, body aches, nosebleeds, and bleeding gums. It became known as El Tifu Negro (the Black Typhus, for the color of vomit and stool),
