Malaria and malarial diseases / by George M. Sternberg.

  • Sternberg, George Miller, 1838-1915.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Malaria and malarial diseases / by George M. Sternberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    PREFACE. It was with considerable hesitation that the writer accepted the proposition of Messrs. Wm. Wood & Co. to prepare for them a volume upon Malaria and Malarial Diseases by a specified date (May 1, 1884). The time allotted to the task seemed short, in view of the ex- tent of the subject and the dimensions of the required volume. More- over, a portion of the time which the Publishers deemed sufficient would necessarily be consumed in the completion of other literary work already commenced, and it would be necessary to undertake a long and expensive journey for the purpose of consulting the literature of the subject in a properly equipped medical library; for the writer was stationed upon the Pacific Coast, and the medical library which he naturally looked upon as the source from which the required data— the recorded experience of physicians in all parts of the world—could best be obtained, was on the other side of the continent, in Washington. Under these circumstances, it would perhaps have been wise to have declined the undertaking. The task was a difficult one, and in view of the widely different opinions held by physicians in regard to the nature of malaria, and of the morbid phenomena which it may produce in man, there was little hope that it would be accomplished in a manner to give general satisfaction. But the subject is one in which the writer is deeply interested, and while he fully recognized that unsolved prob- lems connected with it are not likely to be settled by the pen, it seemed a favorable opportunity to review the literature of the subject and to compare the recorded experience of recent foreign authors, whose works have not been republished in this country, with that of physicians in the malarious sections of the United States. If, then, it might have been wiser to decline the undertaking, the writer failed to