Malaria, influenza and dengue / by Julius Mannaberg [and] O. Leichtenstern ; ed., with additions by Ronald Ross, J.W.W. Stephens and Albert S. Grünbaum ; Auth. tr. from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengle.

  • Mannaberg, Julius, 1860-1941.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Malaria, influenza and dengue / by Julius Mannaberg [and] O. Leichtenstern ; ed., with additions by Ronald Ross, J.W.W. Stephens and Albert S. Grünbaum ; Auth. tr. from the German, under the editorial supervision of Alfred Stengle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    contaminated water: For water contributes much towards health. Such waters then as are marshy, stagnant, and belong to lakes are necessarily hot in summer, thick, and have a strong smell, since they have no current; those who drink them have large and obstructed spleens. . . (chap, vii).* Celsus has left us a finished clinical description of intermittent fever and many of its accompanying symptoms. He differentiates a quotidian fever, composed of quartan attacks, and mentions as an especially pernicious fever the malignant tertian (then called T][iiTpt.raiuv). That the Romans were very close to the trail in regard to the etiology of malaria is proved from the writings of Varro, Columella, Palladius, Vitruvius, and Avicenna, who made swamps, the emana- tions from them, and the minute animals living in them, responsible for the disease. This etiologic idea was lost in the middle ages on account of the influence of Galen's teaching, and Morton, at the end of the seventeenth century, was the first again to pick up the thread.! Mercatus, the court physician to Philips II and III, gives a des- cription of pernicious cases occurring in connection with intermittent fever, and says that they were associated especially with the tertian type. In general, this author is so deeply involved in the humoral pathologic vagaries that pervaded medicine at his time as to be al- most totally unintelligible to us. The Arab physicians also, as Rhazes, Ebn Sina, were acquainted with intermittent fever. The second epoch began with the introduction of Peruvian bark —the middle of the seventeenth century. Following its opening, in quick succession, came the memorable treatises of Morton, Torti, and Sydenham. The complete clinical pathology of malaria stands out fully developed in the first two especially. With cinchona in their hands, Torti and Morton divided the ''es- sential fevers into two principal groups—namely, those that were * Bellos (Athens) declares there is a complete identity between the fevers des- cribed by Hippocrates and those occurring to-day in Greece. t The goddess of fever (Mefitis) had a temple on the Capitol. She was repre- sented as an emaciated, half-nude, bald-headed, horrid figure, with a huge belly and swollen veins. That malaria played a role in public affairs at the time of the empire is evident from Horace's letter to Maecenas (Epistolarum, lib. i, ep. 7, vi ad Maecenam). Horace begs Maecenas to extend his leave of absence, so as to permit him to remain away during the intensest of the summer heat, for when the first figs ripen and faces become pallid from fever, the chief of the funeral pomps (designator), with his black assistants, is very active, and the reading of wills becomes the order of the day (Jilek).