The Florida patient was initially believed to have meningitis, but X-rays and other testing showed that it was pulmonary anthrax, officials said.
32.
But that case was not pulmonary anthrax _ an especially lethal and rare form in which the disease settles in the lungs.
33.
Without treatment, 90 percent of pulmonary anthrax cases are fatal, and even with treatment, the disease is hard to control once symptoms develop.
34.
But in Florida, an alert infectious-disease specialist became suspicious and ordered laboratory tests that confirmed pulmonary anthrax in a tabloid newspaper's photo editor.
35.
But his recovery has helped health experts realize that with appropriate treatment, a diagnosis of pulmonary anthrax is not necessarily a death sentence.
36.
Only 18 cases of pulmonary anthrax have been reported in the United States in the last 100 years, two of which involved laboratory workers.
37.
Since it takes about 10, 000 inhaled spores to cause pulmonary anthrax, the letter could have contained enough anthrax to sicken about 2 million people.
38.
Both inhalation and pulmonary anthrax appear regularly in print over the past 25 years, but neither gains much advantage, since the disease is so rare.
39.
Another Florida man was successfully treated for the disease and two mail handlers in Washington and one in New Jersey remained hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax.
40.
That sense of uncertainty was heightened Sunday by the news that a postal worker in Washington is seriously ill with pulmonary anthrax, presumably from inhaling spores.
