Two monographs on malaria and the parasites of malarial fevers / I. Marchiafava and Bignami, II. Mannaberg.

  • New Sydenham Society
Date:
1894
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two monographs on malaria and the parasites of malarial fevers / I. Marchiafava and Bignami, II. Mannaberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    These analogies between the two diseases cannot surprise us now-a-days, for in both conditions analogous processes occur in the organism, in that sepsis is produced by an infection of the mass of the blood with bacteria and their poisonous products, and malaria by an infection of the blood with protozoa and their products. We can in the meantime regard malaria as a protozoa sepsis, and compare it with the ordinary bacteria sepsis. Just as we refer the septic fever paroxysms (rigors, vomiting, fever, dyspnoea) to an irritation of the medullary centres, the septic jaundice and the diarrhoeas to an irritation of the mucous membrane caused by the septic bacterial poison, so we must seek to explain the analogous appearances in malaria by the action of the protozoa poison upon the same central organs and mucous membranes. In this way the old theory concerning the nervous origin of the malarial paroxysm again presses to a certain extent to the front, although not in the sense understood by Trousseau [97], who described malaria as a direct neurosis, but rather in the sense of G-riesinger [128], who in 1864, with wonderful acuteness, expressed himself as follows : The cause of the periodicity of fever is therefore not found chiefly in a disposi- tion of the nervous apparatus to rhythmical vital actions, as one formerly frequently tried to do, but it must, at least according to the present, although faulty, standpoint of our knowledge con- cerning the causes of heat, be attributed to something periodically taking place in the blood, which is connected with the increased formation of heat.'' The future has abundantly justified Griesinger, for this periodic something taking place in the blood at the time of the paroxysm has, as we have seen, been proved to be the spore- formation of the malarial parasites occurring at more or less regular intervals of time. How simply the fever type is explained by the period of evo- lution of the species of parasite present has been repeatedly mentioned. Also the change of type, for which formerly no reason at all could be found, is now fully explained by the addi- tion or the death of one or more generations of parasites. But it must be mentioned that we have not suflB.cient knowledge concerning the reason for this change in the number of generations. It is frequently seen that a simple tertian may become a double tertian by doubling the generations, but why and how this doubling has taken place we do not know; still less can we explain why ■