cardiologist in New Jersey said yesterday that he thought he might have contracted skin anthrax in the first week of September.
Should the case of the cardiologist, Dr. Gerald M. Weisfogel, turn out to have been anthrax, it would be of considerable interest to investigators. It precedes the first batch of anthrax letters that was sent out on or around Sept. 18 and would indicate a new and earlier source of exposure.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed Thursday to test Dr. Weisfogel's blood for antibodies to anthrax toxin but said it did not expect results in the next few days.
In an interview, Dr. Weisfogel, who has since recovered, said he believed at first that he had a spider bite and treated himself with antibiotics. He picked off the black scab that formed on his skin, and the wound eventually healed. Only recently did a biologist friend suggest that his case might have been anthrax and persuade him to get his blood tested.
Cases of cutaneous anthrax in New York were initially diagnosed as spider bites. Reading the clinical description of one of the cases, Dr. Weisfogel decided that his was "an exact mirror."
There were other factors that made him decide it would be worth testing the possibility. One of his offices is in Kendall Park, next to Franklin Park, the town cited in the return address on the anthrax-laden envelope sent to the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, on Oct. 9.
Dr. Susan Goldstein, a C.D.C. employee who is now working at the New Jersey Department of Health on the anthrax attacks, said a sample of Dr. Weisfogel's blood was on its way to the agency's headquarters in Atlanta to be tested.
"The description he gave could have been a lesion compatible with anthrax," she said.
Dr. Weisfogel said he had continued to feel ill after the skin lesion resolved itself and he checked into John F. Kennedy Hospital in Edison on Oct. 20. Doctors there gave him a diagnosis of spinal meningitis and treated him with doxycycline, an antibiotic that is also recommended for anthrax.
Dr. Weisfogel said he was persuaded to get his blood tested for antibodies to anthrax, a sign of past exposure to the bacterium, by a distant relative, Dr. Henry Niman, a molecular biologist who now works at NetCog, an online financial newsletter, and has taken a keen interest in the anthrax scare. At first the C.D.C. office in New Jersey declined to test his blood, Dr. Weisfogel said, on the grounds that his case had occurred before the first known mailing of anthrax and that he had no connection with the postal system. The office also told him, he said, that a positive result would be meaningless because the current blood test, though highly sensitive to anthrax, also gave many false positives. After further discussions the office agreed on Thursday to undertake the test.
Dr. Goldstein did not comment on his assertions other than to say that Dr. Weisfogel's call was treated the same as other calls her office received.
Anthrax experts said it was too early to tell much from Dr. Weisfogel's account of his case. Dr. Morton N. Swartz, an expert on anthrax at the Massachusetts General Hospital, said that he "wouldn't jump to the conclusion it's anthrax" on the basis of Dr. Weisfogel's description alone because there could be many other explanations.
Dr. Philip Brachman of Emory University, who has studied anthrax for many years, said that the patient usually notices a blister first and, after it bursts, a depressed black scab known as an eschar. Dr. Weisfogel said the first thing he had noticed was a blackened area that later developed into a depressed scab.
"If I had to say yes or no," Dr. Brachman said about the possibility of anthrax, "I'd say no."
Linda Vizi, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Jersey, said word of the doctor's possible infection had not reached law enforcement authorities.
"But if it is confirmed," she said, "we'll give it the full-court press."
For weeks, federal investigators have been tracking mail routes, interviewing pharmacists and surveying universities and other institutions in their search for leads on who might be behind the anthrax attacks.