The endemic diseases of tropical climates with their treatment / by John Sullivan, M.D.

  • Sullivan, John.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The endemic diseases of tropical climates with their treatment / by John Sullivan, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    be the hot-beds of fever, and this difference may arise from the hydrogeological character of the soil peculiar to such localities. In all regions, temperate as well as tropical, the old familiar classic marsh has been always con- sidered as the type of the source and origin from which malaria is derived; but as this fever varies from simple intermittent to a fever of a pernicious type, so does the soil from whence it originates vary both in constitution and appearance from the old classic marsh, clothed with rank vegetation, to the barren soil, even to the sandy desert. The more unhealthy localities, as in certain parts of Italy, Turkey, Greece, as well as in the regions of the tropics, are those which are situated near to the sea, in which there is an admixture of salt with fresh water. We know from sad experience how deadly is the nature of these fevers in hot climates in lands bordering upon estuaries where large rivers empty themselves into the sea. Whenever salt has been debarred from mixing with fresh water, fevers have been known to cease, and to return with the same violence so soon as the waters have become again mixed. When the salt is in excess, over the fresh water, then fevers abate, but if the quantity of the salt and fresh water be equally balanced, then fevers rage with great severity. The lowlands along the coast are in hot climates the foci of malarial fever. There we find the land periodically inundated, heaps of decayed rubbish at