Pathology and treatment of the infectious diseases / by Karl Liebermeister ; translated by E.P. Hurd, with notes and appendices.

Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathology and treatment of the infectious diseases / by Karl Liebermeister ; translated by E.P. Hurd, with notes and appendices. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    laid down. Such, for instance, are the high table lands of Castille, where the dryness is excessive, the elevated plateaux of Dekkan in Hindostan. On the other hand, we are acquainted with some marshy regions where malaria never prevails, although all the favor- able conditions seem present; for instance, the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, several islands of the southern hemisphere. Van Diem-in's Land, New Zealand, Caledonia, some parts of Ireland and Sweden. These facts show that the decomposition of vegetal substances alone does not suffice to engender the disease, and that it is essential that the specific germ shall have a habitat in the soil of the infected localities. Some observa- tions, moreover, seem to prove that the disease may be im- ported into countries heretofore exempt, and this furnishes a new argument in support of the hypothesis of a miasma vivum. It is chiefly in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of Asia, Africa, and America, that we see the most grave forms of marsh poisoning. We, however, ob- serve the disease take on a very severe aspect in some countries of Europe, and even a pernicious character. This is the case along the valleys of the Po, in certain parts of the western coast of Italy, and in some dis- tricts of Holland, in the swampy, low lands bordering on the North Sea in Germany. The light forms are also seen in these localities along with the grave types, just as is the case in countries where the prevalent type is mild. It has often been remarked that epidemics of intermittent fever not unfrequently precede or follow epidemics of typhus, of cholera, or of dysentery. Moreover, authorities have affirmed lhat in malarious countries, turberculosis and typhoid fever do not exist, or at least, are very rarely witnessed. Although in respect to many of the facts which have been cited in support of these statements, we have to do only with accidental coincidences, it is by no means impossible that