Some practical observations on so-called malaria being a water-borne disease / by W.H. Daly.

  • Daly, W. H. (William Hudson), 1842-1901.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some practical observations on so-called malaria being a water-borne disease / by W.H. Daly. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Read before the American Climatological Association, May 29, 1S94, at Washington, D. C.] SOME PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON SO- CALLED MALARIA BEING A WATER- BORNE DISEASE. By W. H. DALY, M.D., PITTSBURG, PA . The writer lias for the past twenty or more years spent probably an average of two months annually in the recreative sports of the field, forest, and stream. The largest proportion of these holiday jaunts have been passed in the lowlands, or in the swamps of the lakesides, or seaside, in the pursuit of wild fowl shooting. Many, if not most, of these regions were, and are generally, admitted to be intensely malarial in character, notably the vast Kankakee swamps in Indiana. In former years, before the writer had noticed certain con- ditions and used certain precautions, he was subject to malarial disease of a continuous or recurring type, clearly traceable to his having drunk the shallow well- and swamp-water of these regions. The observations and studies of the subject and the investi- gations made in the various districts from Manitoba to Louisiana, and all along the southern coast of the Atlantic Ocean and of Cuba, Yucatan, and other districts in Mexico, lead the writer to the conclusion that so-called malarial disease is not easily if at all contracted by inhaling so-called malaria or bad air of the low swampy or new lands, but it is distinctly, if not almost exclusively, due to drinking the water that has come into con- tact with and become infected with the malaria germ or infusoria that exists in the earth and waters of the swamp and lowlands. This germ does not ordinarily, if at all, float in the air during the day, neither does it find easily a vehicle in the fog or vapors of the night.