On July 1, 1936, a letter concerning a child with an unusual cutaneous disease was received at the hospital. An excerpt from the letter is as follows:
"I am a roving reporter for a newspaper, with headquarters in Washington. I travel continuously over the country, and naturally I run into some odd things. The subject of this letter is something I happened onto in a city in North Carolina last February.
"The newspaper boys in this city told me I might find a feature story in a little boy there, who had a strange disease which the local doctors had not been able to diagnose. So I went out to see the child.
"The parents are extremely poor. They live in a disheveled suburb across the railroad tracks called 'Lingo City.' When I arrived the mother was out in the yard chopping wood and chewing tobacco. She is a young