DENGUE (deng'ge), an infectious fever caused by a filter passing virus (q.v.), occurring in warm climates, and transmit ted by mosquito agency (see ENTOMOLOGY, MEDICAL). The symp toms are a sudden attack of fever, accompanied by rheumatic Pains in the joints and muscles with severe headache and erythema. After a few days a crisis is reached, and an interval of two or three days is followed by a slighter return of fever and pain and an eruption resembling measles, the most marked characteristic of the disease. The disease is rarely fatal. Dengue is nearly always epidemic, and in certain districts almost endemic. The area over which it ranges may be stated generally to be between 32° 47' N. and 23° 23' S. The chief epidemics have been those of 1824-26 in India, and in the West Indies and the southern states of North America, in 187o-75, extending practically over the whole of the tropical portions of the East and reaching as far as China. In 1888-89 a great outbreak spread over nearly the whole of Asia Minor, and in 1928 it occurred in Greece.
See Sir Patrick Manson, Tropical Diseases; a Manual of Diseases of Warm Climates (1903) ; J. F. Siler, M. W. Hall and A. P. Hitchens, "Dengue; Its History, Epidemiology, Mechanism of Transmission, Etiology, Clinical Manifestations, Immunity, and Prevention," The Philippine Journal of Science, vol. 29, No. 1-2, Manila (1926).