Black-water fever : being the first report to the Advisory Committee appointed by the Government of India to conduct an enquiry regarding black-water and other fevers prevalent in the Duars / by S.R. Christophers and C.A. Bentley.

  • Christophers, S. R. (Samuel Rickard), 1873-1978.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Black-water fever : being the first report to the Advisory Committee appointed by the Government of India to conduct an enquiry regarding black-water and other fevers prevalent in the Duars / by S.R. Christophers and C.A. Bentley. 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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    America, and Cuba it has been recognised for a considerable time ; while American physicians from some of the Southern States were among the first observers to describe the disease, which has a wide distribution throughout the more malarious portions of that country. That this distribution of Black-water Fever agrees in the main with that of the greatest intensity of malaria is evident; but it has been objected : (1) That in the case of many of these countries the disease has only recently been introduced. (2) That the coincidence with malaria is not exact; and more specially that there are countries notoriously malarious in which Black-water Fever is very rare, or does not exist. The converse of this latter suggestion, namely, that Black-water Fever occurs in comparatively non-malarious districts has not so far as we are aware been advanced. (1) The belief that Black-water Fever had a peculiar and restricted distri- bution has been emphasised in most text-books until quite recent years. To ex^ plain the constantly increasing area from which the disease is now being record- ed some writers have advanced the view that in many of these countries, as, for example, India, the disease has only recently been introduced. This does not seem to us a conclusion warranted by the facts. In making an examination of the literature of Black-water Fever one cannot help remarking that the recognition of its geographical distribution has followed periods in which the different nations became acquainted with the disease in their various colonial possessions. The first may be called the French Period, and dates from the time when Lebeau (12), Daulle (13), and Le Roy de Mericourt (14) first described the disease Fievre Bilious Haematurique as occurring in Madagascar and some of the adjacent islands. Almost immediately other French physicians reported finding the same type of fever in Senegambia, Senegal, Gaboon, Guiana, the Antilles, and other parts of the West Indies. Until 1858 nothing was heard of haemoglobinuric fever outside French pos- sessions. But in that year Verratas (15) a Greek, described what he termed Quinine Hemoglobinuria ; and two years later a similar communication was made by another Greek, Papabasilos (16). The American period commences from about i860. The disease was first described by Doctor Cummings (17) of Louisiana in 1859, and it was shortly afterward srecognised in Alabama and Texas (1866). From this time onward it was reported with increasing frequency from many parts of the Southern States of North America. The Italian period may be said to date from 1874 when Tomaselli (6) pub-