What is malaria? : and why is it most intense in hot climates? : an enquiry into the nature and cause of the so-called marsh poison, with remarks on the principles to be observed for the preservation of health in tropical climates and malarious districts / by C.F. Oldham.

  • Oldham, C. F. (Charles Frederick)
Date:
1871
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What is malaria? : and why is it most intense in hot climates? : an enquiry into the nature and cause of the so-called marsh poison, with remarks on the principles to be observed for the preservation of health in tropical climates and malarious districts / by C.F. Oldham. 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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    where they become the most common, and too often the most deadly, enemies of human life. Constituting, as malarious fevers do, the chief source of sickness and mortality, over a large portion of the earth, it is evident that to discover the cause of a class of diseases so destructive to the liuman race, is of the highest importance, not only to medicine, but to political economy; for until the nature and origin of malaria are fully understood, little can be done to check its destructive effects. To form a just idea of the importance of malarious diseases it is necessary to consider not only their influence upon the fate of an army, or the result of a war, of which history fur- nishes many examples ;* but also them powerful effect in checking the spread of the white race, over a large portion of the globe; and even their influence upon the welfare of this country, intimately connected as it is, Avith every part of the world. There is scarcely a family in Britain but sends forth some of its members to the regions in which these diseases constantly prevail; and where few entirely escape their attacks. The prevalence of malarious fevers in hot climates may be gathered from the fact, that the last Army Medical Report gives the number of cases of paroxysmal fever alone in Bri- tish India, during the year 1867, which was unusually healthy, as 19,375 in a force of 56,896 men; equal to one man in three. Not only did this occur in a healthy season, but some of the corps which suffered most were cantoned at the clean- est, driest, and healthiest stations in the plains. In some instances one corps has suffered much more severely than another, at the same station, and apparently exposed to the same influences. At Ilazareebagh, the A. Battery, 16th Brigade Royal Ar- tillery, had 66 cases of fever amongst 112 men. The 91st Regiment, at the same station, had only 209 cases in an * In Scinde, every officer and every man, of Sir C. Napier’s army of 17000 men, was attacked with fever. In some regiments no surgeon was able to visit the hospitals, and the force was reduced to such a state, that had the hill tribes made a raid, they might have plundered the whole country, as scarcely a man could be found fit for duty. Administration of Scindc. p. 72.