Lectures on tropical diseases : being the Lane lectures for 1905 delivered at Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, U.S.A. August 1905 / by Sir Patrick Manson.

  • Patrick Manson
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lectures on tropical diseases : being the Lane lectures for 1905 delivered at Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, U.S.A. August 1905 / by Sir Patrick Manson. 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.

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    and the domestic animals, the ordinary fauna and flora of the tropics are absolutely different from those of temperate climates ; on the other hand, the majority of the patho- genic fauna and flora of the tropics are the same as those of temperate climates. I say the majority of the pathogenic fauna and flora ; for do we not find the tubercle bacillus everywhere, the typhoid bacillus everywhere, measles, smallpox, syphilis, whooping-cough, pneumonia, tetanus, and many other disease germs everywhere ? Certainly most diseases have a more or less universal distribution; or, at all events, if through some accident of isolation or otherwise they may not occur in certain favoured spots, yet if introduced there, other circumstances being favourable, they are capable of flourishing and spreading regard- less of atmospheric temperature or other climatic con- ditions. I have said the majority of disease germs actually have, or are capable of, universal geographical and climatic range. The expression majority implies that there is a minority not so endowed. It is to this minority, or, rather, to a section of this minority, that the class of diseases designated Tropical belongs. There are some two or three diseases peculiar to temperate climates, limited almost to temperate climates—notably scarlet fever, typhus exanthematicus, and, in great measure, acute rheumatism. But by far the larger number of climatically restricted diseases are tropical diseases—that is to say, diseases absolutely confined to the tropics, and which cannot be introduced into colder climates ; or they are diseases which can be acquired only in the tropics, and which, although they may be introduced, do not spread in cold climates.
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