The Harvard scientists who spent the last four days on the Vineyard
collecting clues that could help them solve the Island's biggest
medical mystery came armed with an unusual tool kit: an aerosol can of
automotive starter fluid, two flowerpots painted blue, a bag of apples
and an empty can of Diet Coke.

His team of Harvard scientists collected 5,000 dog ticks and trapped 35 skunks and raccoons on the Vineyard this summer. Now, parasitologist Sam Telford wants something more to bring back to the lab in Boston - human blood.

Mr. Telford is on the hunt for clues to the mystery of tularemia, the rare and potentially fatal disease that has infected 23 people on the Island in the last three years, killing one man in 2000 who didn't seek medical treatment soon enough.

Nearly all of the victims were landscapers or people who make a living working outdoors.

A rare bacterial infection called tularemia that killed a Chilmark man three years ago appears to have hit the Island for the fourth summer in a row, possibly infecting as many as four people since May.

State public health officials said yesterday that they are evaluating four probable cases of tularemia, all of them either landscapers or people who work outdoors.

For the fifth summer in a row, a rare and potentially fatal disease called tularemia continues to surface on the Vineyard.

State public health officials yesterday confirmed this year's first case of tularemia: a male landscaper from Edgartown who became ill in early June. Another landscaper from Edgartown is listed as a probable tularemia case, pending follow-up blood tests.

Both men are under 30 years of age and have undergone medical treatment for the disease, public health officials said.

The Vineyard's first tularemia case of the year, a 50-year-old male landscaper, may have contracted the potentially fatal disease after handling a dead rabbit he found while working in Edgartown, state public health officials said this week.

Six cases of tularemia this spring and summer on Martha's Vineyard have been confirmed by the state Department of Public Health.

All six individuals who contracted the disease, who ranged in age from 33 to 67, either were landscaping or were outside near where landscaping was occurring. They contracted the potentially fatal disease by breathing in the Francisella tularemia bacterium between May 13 and July 5, health officials said.

All have been successfully treated with antibiotics for the disease, and are recovering.

With six confirmed cases of tularemia and reports of Lyme disease coming in, the Vineyard has begun another season of documenting tick-borne illnesses.

Although cases are still being confirmed, official numbers will not be released until early next year. But initial reports from state public health officials and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital indicate no slowdown in the high rates of tick-borne illnesses on Island.

As a senior editor at Discover Magazine, science journalist Pamela Weintraub had covered myriad scientific dramas throughout her career. But it was her own family’s medical odyssey with Lyme disease — and the book she wrote about it, Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic — that brought her to speak on Monday to about 60 people on Martha’s Vineyard, where tick-borne illness is one of the most serious and prevalent health concerns.

Lyme disease, the tick-borne illness that has been documented at epidemic levels on the Vineyard, is now the focus of a growing public health initiative that involves Island doctors, boards of health and university researchers.

The initiative, which aims to zero in on prevention, education, and improved data collection, is seen by at least one leading expert as a possible model for the rest of the state.