The history of infection / by Arnold C. Klebs.

  • Arnold Klebs
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of infection / by Arnold C. Klebs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that it designates rather a general concept than a special object and that this corre- sponds to the Latin inficere is more than likely. Very similarly the Greek éragy Is used Jater In connection with lepra, the verbal derivative of which Thucydides em- ploys to designate the infection, m his fa- mous account of the Attic plague, so that Sudhoff considers the Greek word a literal translation of the Assyrian term. The He- brew word nega very similarly determines saraath and the two together are translated in our Bible as “the plague of the lep- rosy.” A series of Babylonian tablets ts devoted to lists of animals and plants showing, not only a considerable knowledge of fauna and flora, but also that degree of careful obser- vation necessary for a systematic classifi- cation. The latter does not always corre- spond with ours but that need not disturb us unless we are ready to assume that our classification will survive the next 4,000 years. The Babylonian recognized perfectly well the réle which certain of the smaller animals played in those diseases which for some reason or other we consider, as para- sitic, different from the other imfectious diseases. Dr. F. von Oefele has made a special study of Babylonian entomology and with great courtesy he has put his notes on the subject at my disposal.? The texts begin with the large class of zumbu, the fly, in which are enumerated several diptera and hymenoptera. Their names are determined by those of their various hosts and also by water, stone and other objects, or foods for which they showed a predilection. The fly as the symbol of the god of destruction and pestilence, Nergal, appears quite often in pictorial representation as a special em- blem, so for instance on a seal cylin- der in the collection of the late J. P. Mor- *See Cuneiform Texts, Part xiv, London, 1902. gan.’ The next class is formed by the various bugs which as hemiptera, with some 40,000 species, threatens to drown the modern entomologist. Under the name kalamatu, 18 different lice are recorded. Some of them figure as worms, which need not astonish us, because even quite close to our time they have been frequently described as such. These lice are again named by ther habitat beginning with kalamatu kakkadi, the “‘head louse.” There are three hypothetical kalamates which are said to produce internal disease; they are: mikkana, tultu and mubattira. Tultu is the best known. It is the worm cause of dental caries and toothache and as such became the object of a great Babylonian incanta- tion. This etiologic concept we can follow in an enormous literature way into the 18th Century. Dr. von Oefele also calls my attention to the fact that in the texts of the North American Dakota Indians the same concept Is found.” BIBLICAL .PEOPLES Many cultural streams have crossed each other in the lands of the easternmost corner of the Mediterranean basin with which the 10 Nergal is represented in the company of 14 de- mons over which he has command. They represent various evil influences, some of which surely are diseases, especially fevers. Ungnad in Gressmann: Altorientalische Texte und Bilder, I. p. 69 gives their names as follows: 4. mutabriku, 5. sarabdu, 6. rabisu, 7. dirit, 8. ibitu (?), 9. bennu, 10. sidanu, Ir. mikit, 12. bel-ubri (?), 13. ummu, 14. libu. Bennu here heads five others which all stand for various degrees of heat, indicating possibly feverish diseases. (See Sudhoff, op. cit., note 7.) “A lIous is a worme with many fete & it com- meth out of the filtht and onclene skynne. . .” Book of the Quinte Essence (ed. Furnival) p. 10. 2 He adds: “It is Mongolian in common; from the time prior to the separation of Mongolian and Indian. It entered Babylonian medicine through the Hittites, whom I consider with the Etruscans and other peoples as Mongolian, split off from them somewhat like the Huns.”
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