Diseases of tropical climates.

  • Maclean, William Campbell, 1811-1898.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of tropical climates. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the river-beds and water-courses were reduced to mere lines of widely-separated pools; yet, as Dr. Ferguson records, the army suffered from a remittent fever of such malignancy as to threaten its destruction. The same thing happened to the army in the bare open country by which Ciudad Rodrigo is approached from the side of Portugal, at a time when the country re- sembled a brick-field. The explanation is to be found in the fact that both districts are in the rainy season flooded with water, the malaria being given off only when the drying process begins under the action of a powerful sun. The natives of India, not without good reason, believe that the poison of malaria is often conveyed into the system by water; being generated by the decomposition of vegetable matter in ill-kept and neglected wells. We send our patients from one place to another for change of air, they do this to change the water. There is no place in the world with a worse reputation for malaria and all that it brings in its train than the Roman Campagna. To all appearance it is free from the commonly recognised sources of malaria; but the cultivating hand of man has long been withheld from its rich soil, the energies of which, no longer turned to food- producing ends, are given up to the development of malaria. Recent discoveries have disclosed the inter- esting fact that the Romans were not ignorant of the importance of subsoil drainage as a corrective of malaria; the remains of a regular system of pipes for the purpose having been brought to light. In the absence of this