The Lyme Light

                Before Lyme disease was officially in the books it was still a disease making its rounds. Recent autopsy shows a 5300 year old mummy had Lyme disease. Also before it was in the books Alfred Buchwald described 150 years ago the rash and migraines which is now known to be typical of Lyme disease.

                In the early 1970s a group of people from an area in Lyme, Connecticut found they had the same symptoms including swollen knees, paralysis, skin rashes, headaches and chronic fatigue.  Visits with doctors and hospital stays had become frequent. These people were left undiagnosed and untreated for decades.  Two of the mothers began collecting research and contacting scientists and researches recognized the collection of signs and symptoms of Lyme disease. 

                In 1981, Willy Burgdorfer, a scientist, was studying Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever which is also caused by ticks.  He started studying Lyme disease and found the connection to the deer tick and the bacteria in the tick called  a spirochete   The medical community honored his find in 1982 by renaming the spirochete Borrelia Burgdoferi.