A guide to sick nursing in the tropics / by Andrew Duncan.

  • Duncan, Andrew, 1744-1828
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A guide to sick nursing in the tropics / by Andrew Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    could be shipped and set free alive in Asia, and there give rise to this affection. Nature of the Poison. In 1873 Dr. Perry foreshadowed the nature of the poison, in that he described it to be due to a germ. He held that though not demonstrated as yet, never- theless its existence was rendered beyond doubt by the close analogy between yellow fever and small- pox, scarlet fever and measles. This theoretical opinion has since been amply vindicated. The Con- gressional Yellow Fever Commission in America of 1878-79 declared the cause to lie in a specific par- ticulate organism, endowed with the vital properties of growth and reproduction, whilst yellow fever patients were the most frequent cause of its sjiread from place to jilace, more epidemics having resulted from persons sick with the disease than from any other cause. With regard to the nature of this specific particu- late germ. Dr. Domingos Friere, Commissioner of the Brazilian Government, made a series of researches, and in 1883 embodied his results in a report pre- sented to the Academie des Sciences and to the Biological Society of Paris. His researches, carried out with the aid of M. Rebourgeon, demonstrated by inoculation and inhalation experiments on guinea- pigs, the presence of a specific cryptococcus, which secreted a poison acting on the body of the host affected. Other observers have also described a specific organism, such as the bacillus icteroides of Sanarelli, the bacillus of Durham and Myers, and the Tetragenus febris fiava of Finlay. There can, we think, be no doubt that a specific organism does exist; how does it act ? In 1881 Finlay, of Havana, first drew attention to the transmission of the disease by mosquitoes. He caused a mos- quito to bite a yellow fever patient, and then to H 2