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or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts at 11 a.m. on December 5th, 1980 at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, California.

Dr. Jim Groundwater presses a button to call in his next patient.

Ken Horn is the man's name,

but Dr Groundwater has not been looking forward to this appointment.

He's seen Ken a lot over the past few months, and every time he's been stumped by the 37-year-old's

condition. The door opens and Ken shuffles in.

As Dr. Groundwater shakes Ken's hand, he can see that Ken's been crying.

Gently, he asks Ken to remove his shirt and step onto the scales.

As Ken fumbles with his buttons and removes his shirt,

Dr. Groundwater tries to hide his shock. Ken is gone, far more so than his last

appointment. It's almost like he's wasting away.

The scales confirm, Dr. Groundwater's fears.

Ken has lost another seven pounds,

and as he steps off the scale,

he reels off a list of symptoms that Dr. Groundwater knows all too well by now,

fatigue, diarrhea, nausea, and strange purple lesions on his chest.

There is no doubt the Ken is dangerously ill, but Dr. Groundwater can't work out what's causing it.

All he can do is keep trying different tests.

He explains that he's going to send Ken for a biopsy of his lymph nodes.

...