Medical essays : compiled from reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery / by medical officers of the U.S. Navy.

  • United States. Navy Department. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical essays : compiled from reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery / by medical officers of the U.S. Navy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    tent element with the toxical miasmatic principle of the marshes, and that in the localities where it reigns yellow and typhus fevers never have existed, and cannot. He says: This principle (the cause of pernicious paludal intermittent fever) not being contagious, they are forcibly banished to their marshy local- ities, and exclude entirely from their latitudes yellow fever and typhus, and do not undergo any other metamorphosis than that of masked fevers. Certain it is that the atmosphere circulates badly in the humid gorges of the Sierra, impregnating itself easily with the marshy miasms proceeding from the decomposition of a scanty vegetation, under the influence of solar heat during the day, while the cold commences as soon as the sun disappears be- hind the mountains and permits vapors to condense in these valleys, a circumstance which cannot make otherwise than a per- ceptible impression upon their inhabitants, and predisposes to fever. The work upon the road in many places, by the ground being broken up, has occasioned the emanation of a fetid odor, more offensive than that of sulphureted hydrogen. It may be that this telluric miasm, acting upon a system previously im- pressed with the miasma of the ordinary intermittent, may de- velop a highly malignant fever. This fever attacks by preference the whites, the mongrel, and especially foreigners. Acclimated persons offer a moderate re- sistance, but negroes, Chinese, and Indians are most exempt, although the latter are peculiarly liable to yellow fever. It sub- jects to a second attack, does not preserve from yellow fever, nor does the latter grant immunity from it. Happily it is limited to its region, for its toxical principle, being non-contagious, is not ambulant. It is sufficient only to remove to a short distance to be withdrawn from its influence. Departing from Lima, the rail- road follows the left bank of the Rimac, and until it reaches La Chosica the workmen are only subject to the simple intermittent; from thence, where the verrugas waters commence, they are ex- posed to this pestilential fever up to the point where begins the cold climate of the Sierra.