A treatise on relapsing or famine fever / By R. T. Lyons.

  • Lyons, Richard Thomas.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on relapsing or famine fever / By R. T. Lyons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    explained. A cause known to produce a disease in Europe will as surely produce the same disease in India. The human race is essentially the same in this country as in Europe, and is influenced by physical circumstances in the same manner. Whatever differences there may be between the fevers in Europe and in India, they are unimportant, and do not involve a dissimilarity in their nature or cause. Equivalent differences exist in the human race in this country and in Europe. The people are olive, black, or dark complexioned in this country, and the women attain maturity early in life, and some other differences might be mentioned; but these peculiarities have never been regarded by naturalists as constituting an essential difference between the people of India and of Europe. Relapsing fever has long been recognised in this country as a distinct disease, and various designations have been applied to it, such as jungle fever, bilious remittent fever, congestive fever and other names. The chief error regarding it was the ascription of its origin to malaria, or some subtle but unknown delete- rious aerial agent. In this work it is shown that the want of food is the origin of the disease, and that it is propagated by contagion. In recent years, in the Bengal Presidency, famine and scarcity from drought, and wide-spread distress from inundations of the rivers, have been common. The fever which followed these calamities has been ascribed to malaria : the tangible cause, which was present, we are told was inoperative; whereas in Europe its effect would have manifested itself in a form of fever which in this country lias boen and is still by many regarded as malarious. This serious error will, I trust, be ultimately cor- rected by the exposition of the disease in its, various forms which is presented in the following pages.