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To the Editor. — I was particularly interested in the report on "Cave-Associated Histoplasmosis—Costa Rica" 1 because of a personal experience with this condition during World War II, prior to the recognition of histoplasmosis. In 1943, with a group of eight airmen, I was sent into the mountains of Trinidad to rescue a member of our squadron who had fallen into a 30-ft shaft about a half mile into a cave while exploring with a fellow. It was during the rainy season and we had a narrow "window" of time to get in and out, as the passages reportedly would flood. We found an 8-ft entrance that soon opened into a large cavern where the air was filled with disturbed bats and the screeching of sea hawks and the floor was deep in bat guano. We found our man deep in the cave with a fractured spine and other injuries

This apparatus provides a cheap and remarkably efficient means of producing any desired degree of hyperextension of the dorsolumbar spine and makes easy the application of a plaster-of-paris jacket in dorsal recumbency. It is particularly valuable in the forcible correction of compression fractures of the spine. It is a combination of an ordinary automobile screw-jack with a simple device that I1 described in 1907. Two short pieces of half inch gas pipe, 2 inches long, are brazed vertically to the top of the jack, about an inch apart. Four flat strips of iron measuring ½ by ⅛ by 4 inches are bent at the middle to a right angle and two of them are slipped into each gas pipe (fig. 1). This makes two T shaped supports on which will rest the kyphosis, protected by a thick piece of felt 4 or 5 inches square. The head and shoulders rest