Endemic melioidosis in residents of desert region after atypically intense rainfall in central Australia, 2011.

After heavy rains and flooding during early 2011 in the normally arid interior of Australia, melioidosis was diagnosed in 6 persons over a 4-month period. Although the precise global distribution of the causal bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei remains to be determined, this organism can clearly survive in harsh and even desert environments outside the wet tropics.

Death of the first white resident of North Queensland.

The first white resident of North Queensland's death certificate gives the final illness as 'arthritis'. This examination of contemporary records and more recent reports, together with the results of discussion with colleagues interested in medicine and history, attempts to suggest the reasons for his various symptoms and his final demise. This life story is reminiscent of a 'Boy's own' adventure with shipwrecks, survival at sea, coexistence with Aboriginal tribesmen before returning to 'white society', marriage and the start of a family. Are there lessons here for the twenty-first century physician and rheumatologist? Would the commonplace illnesses of mid nineteenth-century Queensland be very different to the problems seen in our outpatient clinics today?

Sherlock Holmes and tropical medicine: a centennial appraisal.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle incorporated an unidentified tropical disease as a murder weapon in the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Dying Detective," written in 1913. Documentary and circumstantial evidence suggests that the disease mentioned was melioidosis. The description of the newly identified disease occurred shortly before Doyle's death. Doyle's other works at the time reflect a consistent interest in tropical disease.