Volume 2

Reports of the commission appointed by the Admiralty, the War Office, and the civil government of Malta, for the Investigation of Mediterranean Fever / under the supervision of an Advisory Committee of the Royal Society.

Date:
1905-1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Reports of the commission appointed by the Admiralty, the War Office, and the civil government of Malta, for the Investigation of Mediterranean Fever / under the supervision of an Advisory Committee of the Royal Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    37/84 (page 35)
    1894 to 1903, and amongst the civil population in Gozo, 8-4 per 100' attacked died during the same period. These figures form a striking contrast to the case mortality of the Army and of the Navy. In the Army, during the period 1897 to 1903, the case mortality was 3-2 per cent., and in the Navy it was only 1-4 per cent, during the period 1897 to 1901. It is probable that the case mortality is higher amongst the civil population than in the Army and Navy, owing tO' the superior nursing and attention enjoyed by the services, but I do not think it likely that the difference noted above represents the true- state of affairs. Probably the high case mortality among the civilians is largely due to the fact that mild cases of Mediterranean Fever more often escape notification than severe ones. Temperature and Rainfall in Connection mth Mediterranean Fever.— No official data were available with regard to temperature and rainfall for the whole of the period 1894 to 1903. The curves in the accom- panying chart are constructed from figures kindly supplied me by the Rev. Father J. F. Dobson, S.J., the result of observations made at St. Julian's, near Valetta. I have inserted also a curve representing the case incidence of Mediterranean Fever, for comparison. The last- named curve is based on figures taken from the civil official notification records (see next page). It will be at once seen that there is a very close correspondence between the curve representing the temperature and that repre- senting the number of cases. The rise of the latter curve follows that of the former at an interval of about one month, which would be approximately sufficient to allow for incubation and notification if the incidence of fever were directly dependent upon the temperature of the air. The temperature curve attains its maximum in July and continues high during August, after which it begins to drop. The case curve attains its maximum a month later, but, unlike Dhe tempera- ture curve, it at once commences to drop, so that it would appear that whatever connection the air temperature may have with case incidence, does not remain so obvious after the former has attained its maximum. The curve representing rainfall is in general the inverse of that representing temperature. It attains its minimum in July, but it is almost as low in June and August. The case curve commences to drop at the same time that the rainfall curve commences to rise, allowing no interval for incubation and notification, so that the connection is not clear; nor does the steep rise of the rainfall curve, at the end of September, produce a correspondingly steep decline in the case curve as might have been expected were the connection between the two intimate. Seasonal Prevalence of Mediterranean Fever.—On p. 37 will be found a table giving the number of cases that were notified each month of c 2