Selected Monographs.

  • New Sydenham Society.
Date:
1888
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected Monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    sudden or very rapid lowering of temperature, rendered more injurious by the marked humidity generally found in malarious countries. This opinion has been adopted by even distinguished observers like Santarelli,* and sustained recently by Oldham.f Here the essence of the disease has clearly been confounded with a frequent, but not invariable, cause, determining development. Undoubtedly many persons, so long as they use every precau- tion against chill, live with impunity in malarious countries, but are seized with an attack if they leave off such precaution, and this even after having left the malarious district. The same holds good of cholera and other like diseases, and is easily explained by the disturbances of the circulation which chilling brings about in vascular areas, which allow the disease- ferment, already in the system, to fix itself in some part of the body and there display its evil influence. Besides, malarious fevers may arise without the intervention of this cause, as one may easily satisfy himself, especially in places where the graver forms of malaria prevail. On the other hand, in non-malarious countries, this cause (chilling), however severe it may be, never originates a malarious fever. The same reason—viz., the inconstancy of the relation between condition of soil and malaria production—which has led some to reject the idea of a specific cause of infection, has suggested to others that malaria may be due to a parasitic organism which requires for its development not only favourable external condi- tions, but also the presence of a germ capable of giving rise to it. Various reasons tell in favour of this hypothesis; among others, certain analogies which are common to malaria and other known parasitic infections, and the augmented production of the former when left to itself. When man's industry ceases to remove the external favouring conditions of malarious produc- tion, this assumes such vast proportions as are inconceivable without the existence of an organism capable, when its evolution is no longer checked, of infinite multiplication. This enormous increase is historically proved, especially in Italy. The Tuscan and Roman Maremma, the Eoman Campagna, Pesto, Selinute, had malaria in ancient times, but were inhabited by numerous and prosperous populations; now they are hardly * Santarelli, Researches, f Oldham.