Reprints of articles contributed to medical journals, 1895-1909 / by John D. Gimlette.

  • Gimlette, John D. (John Desmond), 1867-1934
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Reprints of articles contributed to medical journals, 1895-1909 / by John D. Gimlette. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    101/160 (page 97)
    characteristic as one would expect it to be from descriptions given in books [10]. Dr. Barker, of the Sarawak Civil Service, was the first to identify puru with yaws from Kuching in 1898 [11], and Dr. Connolly, of the Federated Malay States Civil Service, wrote a valuable memorandum in the same year, on the occurrence of yaws in Kinta, a district in the Federated Malay States [12]. Puru is given as a synonym of yaws in Scheube’s “Diseases of Warm Countries” [19] (1903), and Mr. George Pernet (1901) has mentioned the puru of the Malay States under the heading of yaws [13], as well as Dr. C. W. Daniels, the Director, Institute for Medical Kesearch, Federated Malay States, who has included it among the commoner diseases of Malays [14] ; but with these important exceptions there are few, if any, direct references to the prevalence of the disease in the Malay Peninsula. The Etiology op Puru. The true infective agent of the disease has not yet been recognised, and in a review of the etiology of puru, little or no support can be relied upon from any in-patient hospital statistics. Cases either under the name of puru or of yaws are seldom included in the returns of the Federated Malay States hospitals. The reason is that although the Malay native attends readily as an out-patient at any convenient aud charitable dispensary, or possibly clamours for medicine on the visit of a European to his village, yet, notwithstanding the many opportunities for further improvement offered by European hospital treatment, the peasant fails to this day to be attracted by the benefit of treatment in a hospital ward, and generally applies for admission in a spirit of tolerant curiosity and in a desultory fashion, which is merely the effect of a momentary enthusiasm or the result of a personal attachment.