The use of quinine during the Civil War.

  • Churchman, John W. (John Woolman), 1877-1937.
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The use of quinine during the Civil War. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    dew-point high, the mean temperature from 80° to 82°. Lake Tuscawilla suddenly disappearing subterraneously in 1838 and leaving a mushy bog behind it, Lake Orange grad- ually passing from sight throughout several years—these were samples of what not unusually happened. A dead level/' said a medical writer of the time, and a half drained country alternately drenched with rain and broiled by an almost tropi- cal sun—reeking with the steam from ten thousand swamps, lagoons, bogs, and savannas—would furnish ample materials for vegetable decomposition and miasmatic effluvia. And such material was indeed furnished. All fevers of malarial origin —intermittents, remittents, congestive fevers, dysen- tery—prevailed throughout the State. The first sign, indeed, of residence in Florida—so it was said at the time—was the cutaneo-hepatic sympathy of Dr. James Johnson; an increase of perspiration with an increase and vitiation of bile. Then followed a series of symptoms characterized by increasing malaise, impaired digestion, growing irritability, pallor, lan- guor, and tendency to venous congestion; leading, in the end, to a frank attack of fever—the two never-failing signs of an oncoming attack being peculiar sensations in the right hypo- chondrium (attributed to hepatic engorgement) and the pas- sage of dark red urine, small in amount. Finally when the attack was over the patient who had brought a vigorous con- stitution from the north, was left permanently pale, languid, with a poor digestion, torpid liver, muscular debility, and great susceptibility to atmospheric changes. Such was the attrac- tion offered to immigration. And this state of affairs existed not only in the regions of marshes. Malaria was noticeably present in the barren and sandy portions as well—its presence being explained at the time by the geological character of the soil which was studied in great detail. The prevailing north- west winds were also held to account for much of the disease —a pretty distinct relation being established between the oc- currence of miasms and the land breezes. Also the drinking of water in the limestone and alluvial regions must, it was thought, have some etiological relation to the diseases; for had not Dr. Kush said, There can be no doubt of the predisposi- (3)