A manual of practical hygiene : intended especially for medical officers of the Army and for civil medical officers of health / by Edmund A. Parkes.

Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of practical hygiene : intended especially for medical officers of the Army and for civil medical officers of health / by Edmund A. Parkes. 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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    fevers are prevalent, in others not; the only difference is, that the latter are supplied with pure water, the former with marsh or nullah water full of vege- table debris. In one village there are two sources of supply,—a tank fed by surface and marsh water and a spring; those only who drink the tank water get fever. In a village (Tulliwaree) no one used to escape the fever; Mr Bettington dug a well, the fever disappeared, and, in the last fourteen years, has not returned. Another village (Tambatz) was also “ notoriously unhealthy,” a well was dug, and the inhabitants became healthy. Nothing can well be stronger than the positive and negative evidence brought forward in this paper. Dr Moore (Indian Annals, 1867) has also noted his opinion of malarious disease being thus produced; and M. Commaille has lately (Rec. de Mem. de Med. Mil. Nov. 1868, p. 427) stated, that in Marseilles paroxysmal fevers, formerly unknown, have made their appearance, since the supply to the city has been taken from the canal of Marseilles. In reference also to this point, I observe that Dr Townsend, the Sanitary Commissioner for the Central Pro- vinces in India, mentions in one of his able reports (for 1870, published at Nagpore in 1871, para. 143 et seg.) that the natives have a.current opinion that the use of river and tank water in the rainy season (when the water always contains much vegetable matter) will almost certainly produce fever (i.e, ague), and he believes there are many circumstances supporting this view. In this way the prevalence of ague in dry elevated spots is often, he thinks, to be explained. He mentions also that the people who use the water of streams draining forest lands and rice fields “ suffer more severely from fever (ague) than the inhabitants of the open plain drawing their water from a soil on which wheat grows. In the former case there is far more vegetable matter in the water. The Upper Godavery tract is said to be the most aguish in the province, yet there is not an acre of marshy ground ; the people use the water of the Godavery, which drains more dense forest land than any river in India. In the “ Landes ” (of south-west France), the water from the extensive i sandy plain contains much vegetable matter, obtained from the vegetable deposit, which binds together the siliceous particles of the subsoil. It has a marshy smell, and, according to Faure, produces intermittents and visceral engorgements. Dr Blanc, in his papers on Abyssinia, mentions that on the march from Massowah to the highlands, Mr Prideaux and himself, who drank water only in the form of tea or coffee, entirely escaped fever, while the others who were less careful suffered, and, as Dr Blanc believes, from the water. The same facts have been noticed in this country. Twenty years ago Mr Blower of Bedford mentioned a case in which the ague of a village had been much lessened by digging wells, and he refers to an instance in which, in the parish of Houghton, almost the only family which escaped ague at one time was that of a farmer who used well water, while all the other persons drank ditch water.* At Sheerne'ss the use of the ditch water, which is highly impure with vege- table debris, has been also considered to be one of the chief causes of the extraordinary insalubrity.*]* At Versailles a sudden attack of ague in a regiment of cavalry was traced to the use of surface water taken from a marshy district. J * Snow “ On the Mode of Communication of Cholera.” 2d edit. 1855, p. 180. f Is it not possible that the great decline of agues in England is partly due to a purer drink- ing water being now used ? Formerly, there can be little doubt, when there was no organised supply, and much fewer wells existed, the people must have taken their supply from surface collections and ditches, as they do now, or did till lately, at Sheerness. X Grainger’s Report on Cholera. Appendix (B), page 95 ; footnote.