When the news of our mini-epidemic began to spread among members of the expedition, accompanied by gruesome photos of weeping ulcers, it was hard not to think about the centuries-old legend and its oft-cited “curse of the monkey god.” All those flowers we chopped down! Gallows humor aside, though, many of us were privately aghast at having walked so blithely into that hot zone, and then having congratulated ourselves, prematurely, for emerging from the jungle unscathed. The jokes petered out quickly in the face of this dramatic disease, which had the potential to alter the course of each of
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