Two monographs on malaria and the parasites of malarial fevers. : I. Marchiafava and Bignami. II. Mannaberg.

  • The New Syndenham Society.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two monographs on malaria and the parasites of malarial fevers. : I. Marchiafava and Bignami. II. Mannaberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    12/492 (page 8)
    tinction involved. To translate the Latin literally would not have conveyed Torti's meaning • so for better, for worse, I adopted simple malignant fever and complicated malignant fever as the nearest equivalents I could suggest. This, however, is only a compromise with the difficulty, and practically leaves every one still to master it for himself, though by the use of italics and quotation marks, I have tried to do what I could to assist the reader. No one will recognise more than I do how imperfectly my aim has been attained. The solitaria is in most cases not a simple fever, though it never has the single well-marked com- plication which gives to Torti's comitata its name. It must be noted that the distinction lies not between a case, strictly speaking, without a complication, and another with one, but between a case with a single complication, so well marked as to make it possible to mistake a malarial fever for cholera, apoplexy, &c, and another in which one or more complications may exist, to such a minor extent as not to make any similar mistake possible. Even here, however, it must be borne in mind that the morbid process causing the coma, profuse diarrhoea, &c, is one intimately con- nected with the disease, a part of it, and not a superadded complication, as a broken leg in a case of phthisis, a malarial fever attacking a surgical patient, or delirium tremens occurring in a case of pneumonia. This question of classification will not interest the general reader in England, while to anyone in India, or wherever questions relating to malarial fevers require minute examination, the distinction dwelt on by Torti will be easily arrived at by careful study of the text. Several technical expressions occur which are not yet current in general medical literature. Those which, though new to myself, seemed to be probably familiar to younger men, I have generally passed by without notice. I have ventured, however, in a few instances to append an explanatory foot-note, to save others the trouble I have had in arriving at the meaning. I am aware that in a few years such aids will seem superfluous, as the younger generation will have grown up, using words that to many of us are new ones ; I shall be content, however, if such foot-notes serve a useful though temporary purpose. The elaborate temperature charts, with synchronous annotations of the parasitic finds met with in the blood, appended to this volume, are worthy of the closest study. It may help in this if I point out that the headings M. and E. refer to day and night observations. Under each of these headings the four columns indicate three-hour periods which begin at 12 o'clock. Thus, when he desires to do so, the