The malarial fevers of Baltimore : An analysis of 616 cases of malarial fever, with special reference to the relations existing between different types of haematozoa and different types of fever / by William Sydney Thayer and John Hewetson.

  • Thayer, William Sydney, 1864-1932.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The malarial fevers of Baltimore : An analysis of 616 cases of malarial fever, with special reference to the relations existing between different types of haematozoa and different types of fever / by William Sydney Thayer and John Hewetson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the entire cycle of development of the parasite may be passed through while it is yet contained within a phagocyte. Bastianelli and Biguami assert that, with the exception, occasionally, of spores, all included parasites are rapidly destroyed unless they be contained in red blood corpuscles. If this progressive growth of the included bodies occurs, they believe that one should find all stages of development, with equal frequency, within the phagocyte. But this is not the case. While the included parasites may be in every stage of development, certain forms are found with much greater frequency than others. The youngest forms are, for instance, rarely seen, while the older are more common; facts which, they believe, are strong evidence against Golgi's idea. The second part of their paper is devoted to a consideration of cer- tain lethal infections with but few parasites. They assert that if one takes into consideration the number of parasites in the whole system, not only in the peripheral blood, there exists, always, in pernicious fever, a considerable number of organ- isms. They have never observed a case of pernicious fever where the diagnosis was not to be made by the examination of the peripheral blood. They take up those acutely fatal cases with marked cerebral symptoms which, at autopsy, show evidences of but a slight or, indeed, of an old cured malarial infection, in association with cerebral hyper- aemia, pulmonary hypostaxis and haemorrhages, the other organs showing no grave degenerations. These cases, which occur almost invariably, at the hottest season of the year, often in individuals who work in the fields, they believe to be very possibly instances of isola- tion and not due, as some have supposed, to an unusual toxicity of the parasites. Another section of the paper treats of the period of incubation of the experimental malarial fevers, and of the nature and origin of the recrudescences and relapses. They report four new cases of experimental infection with the aestivo-autumnal parasites. In the first case the injection (how made?) consisted of 2 cc. of blood; irregular fever with the typical parasites appeared two days later. In the second case, where the parasites were few, 5 cc. were inocu- lated with exactly the same result. In the third case, f cc. of blood produced fever in five days; the inoculated blood contained but few organisms. 15