Cotton fever is a syndrome that is often associated with intravenous drug use, specifically the use of cotton to filter drugs like heroin. The cause of the condition has been established to be the endotoxin shed by the bacteria Enterobacter agglomerans which colonizes cotton plants. A condition very similar to cotton fever was described in the early 1940s among cotton-farm workers. The term cotton fever was coined in 1975 after the syndrome was recognized in intravenous drug users. However, some sources have attributed the symptoms of cotton fever with simple sepsis occasioned by unsafe and unsanitary drug injection practices. This is borne out by the fact cotton fever occurs in equal spread with all injectable drug users, with various filter materials utilized.
Famous quotes containing the words cotton and/or fever:
“It is remarkable with what pure satisfaction the traveler in these woods will reach his camping-ground on the eve of a tempestuous night like this, as if he had got to his inn, and, rolling himself in his blanket, stretch himself on his six-feet-by-two bed of dripping fir twigs, with a thin sheet of cotton for roof, snug as a meadow-mouse in its nest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Y’know Pete, back where I come from folks call that love stuff “quick poison” or “slow poison.” If it’s quick poison it hurts you all over real bad like a shock of electricity. But if it’s slow poison, well, it’s like a fever that aches in your bones for a thousand years.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)