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 the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![North-Western Provinces, 1870, wMch appeared in the Indian Observer of 19t]i Angnst, 1871. If the accounts are not exaggerated, and we are sure they are not, these once favourite regions have become simple pest-houses. The whole routine of ordinary life is interrupted by disease. The ripened grain drops for want of hands to gather it. Children, with their little hands, strive to guide the plough, their fever-stricken parents being unable to move. The courts cannot do their work because the suitors and witnesses cannot attend. And if they do attend, it is probably to find the officers themselves incapacitated by sickness. Such was the state of Mozufferghur and Saha- runpore last year. Such is probably their condition this year. In the words of the Commissioner of Meerut, ' The people of these districts will die out unless remedies are applied, and at an early date. The physical strength of the living population is decreasing rapidly. Dysentery, chest diseases, every disease to which we are subject, finds an open welcome and its victim; and although I have no sure data, it is a common complaint and notorious, that the generative powers of the male population have deterio- rated.' The epidemic which occurred in the Peshawur valley in the autumn of 1869, which is described by Mr. H. W. Bellew, under the name of Peshawur fever, was clearly relapsing fever. It commenced in the middle of October, reached its climax about the end of November, after which it rapidly declined, although it lingered till the end of February or the beginning of March of the following year. After January, few cases occurred in fresh subjects, while relapses were common. Mr. Bellew says that the fever, in its simplest and ordinary form, was intermittent, but with a very wide range of symptoms; often it acquired a remittent character, and sometimes appeared to lapse into continued fever. Whole families were prostrated at the same time. In some cases the intermittent type maintained its prominence all through the illness, in others it was hardly traceable, an utter prostration of strength, growing malaise, and progressive deterioration of the blood being the most noticeable symptoms. The remittent type was](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21987403_0108.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
