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* Steere concluded that he was dealing with a previously unrecognized disease, which was probably viral and probably transmitted by an arthropod. (Insects, spiders, and ticks are arthropods.) He christened it “Lyme arthritis.” The name was changed to Lyme disease when the infection was found to affect the heart and the nervous system as well as the skin and joints.
1976
* Steere began testing blood from Lyme disease victims for specific antibodies against 38-known tick-transmitted diseases and 178 other arthropod-transmitted viruses. Not one came out positive.
* When the broader definition of the disease was applied, more cases were discovered, in Connecticut, adjoining states, and the upper Midwest.
* Steere learned about the work of a Swedish dermatologist named Arvid Afzelius, who in 1909 had described an expanding, ring-like lesion and speculated that it was caused by the bite of an Ixodes tick. He named the rash “erythema chronicum migrans,” meaning “chronic red rash that increases in size” in Latin, or “ECM” for short. ECM sounded a lot like the rash associated with Lyme disease.
* ECM had responded to penicillin in Europe, suggesting that the cause was bacterial, not viral. But no microorganisms could be found in fluid from the joints of Lyme disease patients.
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