Produced by Thiers Halliwell, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriberâs notes: The text of this e-book has been preserved in its original form apart from correction of a few typographic errors (omposition â composition, recal â recall, gives â give, bloodvessels â blood vessels), and insertion of some missing quotation marks. Inconsistent hyphenation and inconsistent spelling (Scheld/Scheldt/Sheldt) has not been altered. Footnotes have been numbered and positioned below the relevant paragraphs. AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN AND INTIMATE NATURE OF MALARIA. By THOMAS WILSON, CHEVALIER DE LâORDRE DU LION NEERLANDAIS. LONDON: HENRY RENSHAW, 356, STRAND. 1858. LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN. TO M. ROCHUSSEN, MINISTER OF COLONIES AT THE HAGUE. SIR,-- I have taken the liberty of dedicating this little work to you. It treats of a subject on which I have made many experiments and collected many observations in Belgium and in Holland. I have carefully weighed the conflicting evidence of some distinguished observers, and the conclusion arrived at is, that this conflict has arisen partly from a want of due care in making the observations, partly from the extreme difficulty accompanying all inquiries in which physiology and pathology, health and disease, are necessarily involved. In the course of my memoir I have endeavoured to do justice to Holland, esteeming it to be the most remarkable country in the world. I cannot find in the history of any other nation proofs so clear of the beneficial effects of indomitable industry, directed by intelligence, over the welfare and destinies of a people; nowhere do I find evidence so convincing of the great results flowing from the application of practical science to the wants of a people; nowhere do I find to the same extent a sound commercial and political economy, first developed and acted on in Holland, lead so directly to the civilization and welfare of a nation. Those great principles which other nations and other races discussed theoretically and elaborated into systems, the nation of which you are a distinguished citizen, discovered, adopted, applied, and enforced. To Holland, as a nation, belongs eminently the character of practical. Whilst other nations left uncultivated as they found them, or rendered unproductive, the most fertile territories, seemingly unable to turn them to account, the country and people to which you belong compelled the ocean to retire from a barren, unprofitable, and untillable soil, which they converted into a garden; and if ever the great problem of rendering the whole earth habitable for man be solved, I may venture to predict--with all due respect for other nations and other races--that the solution must come from Holland. As it would be presumptuous in me--a humble individual--directly to address a nation, I have ventured to do so indirectly through you. Permit me, therefore, to dedicate this little work to you, as the expression of my personal regard and friendship, and of my deep respect for the nation to which you belong. I am, SIR, Most respectfully yours, THE AUTHOR. TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. Epidemics--Their mysterious character--Distinction between endemics and epidemics--Malaria, where chiefly met with--Is it of one kind or several?--Authorâs long residence in a _malaria_-producing country pp.Â 1â3 CHAPTER I. The question as to there being several kinds of malaria, further examined--Theory of Macculloch, tracing to a malaria, chiefly generated by man himself, all forms of disease, from the plague to a common neuralgia--This theory now accepted, and to a certain extent acted on by the British Government--Experiments of the Board of Health--Results to be seen at Luton, Birmingham, and London pp.Â 4, 5 CHAPTER II. The history of epidemics adverse to the theory of Macculloch--Results of confounding drains with sewers, and of converting drains into drain-sewers--Influence of the external world (earth, air, and water) over man, first examined by Hippocrates in his celebrated treatise, â_De aere, aquis et locis_,â[1] but with other views--Influence of modern chemistry over physiology--Men now expect from chemistry a solution of some of the great problems of physiology and pathology still unsolved pp.Â 6â14 [1] Î ÎµÏÎ¹ Î±ÎµÏÎ¿Î½, á½Î´Î±ÏÏÎ½ ÎºÎ±á½¶ ÏÎ¿ÏÏÎ½. Caryâs edition. Paris. 1806. CHAPTER III. The great plague in the time of Justinian--View as to its African origin, and strictly contagious nature, adopted by Gibbon--Admits, however, the necessity for an insalubrious condition of the atmosphere, in addition to the presence of the poison--Its reappearance at present in Northern Africa (Bengazzi)--Modern theories as to its origin and mode of propagation, refuted by the histories of plague, cholera, and typhus--Murrains pp.Â 15â25 CHAPTER IV. View of nature acted on by the Hollander and Brabanter--Their struggle to overcome the difficulties of their position--Rise of the Dutch Republic, and of the School of Mechanical and Practical Science of Holland--Its influence over Europe and the world--Drainage of the Lake of Haarlem--Practical instances of the truth of the principle, that âwhen man interferes with nature, he must carry through the work to an issueâ--How to convert a peat-bog into a healthy meadow, a dreary waste into a profitable, cheerful farm pp.Â 26â30 CHAPTER V. Sources of malaria--Various medical hypotheses refuted by Colonel Tulloch--Intermittents and remittents as they appear on the Western Coast of Africa and in Canada pp.Â 31â43 CHAPTER VI. Extent of life on the globe as proved by the microscope--Theory of Cuvier as to the nutrition of plants and animals--Vast extent of the microscopic living world--The âblooming of plantsâ--Results of disturbing the muddy banks of rivers--Sources of the bad odours of certain marshes and rivers--Remarkable influence of a change in temperature over the products of fermentation--Parasite theory of putrefaction, fermentation, and disease, refuted by Liebig, pp.Â 44â54 CHAPTER VII. Decomposition and metamorphosis of animal beings--Influence they exercise over the soil as a habitation for man--Disposal of the excreta and remains of animals and vegetables--Danger of these when accumulated--Immunity of savage tribes--Scurvy amongst the white troops at the Cape of Good Hope, the healthiest climate in the world--Metamorphoses of organic remains--Influence of oxygen, of nitrogen, and ammonia--Source of the inorganic principles--Fluate of lime in fossil bones--Danger to man of putrescent sea-water--Manâs incessant struggle with nature--Fatality of the climate of Rio pp.Â 55â65 CHAPTER VIII. Earth, air, and water, in relation to man--How modified by him--Results of that modification--Action and reaction--Antagonism of man to nature--Effects of human labour on the soil--How man protects his dwelling--Distinction between a drain and a sewer, a distinction first practically denied in England--Chemical elements of animal bodies--Nourishment of plants--Exhaustion of the soil in Virginia--Value of farm-yard manure--Agriculture in China--Effects of clearing the primÃ¦val forests of America--Causes of the hay-fever, typhus and typhoid fevers--Effects of bad ventilation--Importance of the infusoria in natureâs great scheme--Origin and action of _humus_--Functions of the _humus_ and of the leaves--Means adopted in Holland for the conversion of a bog or morass into a polder--Antediluvian vegetation--Elements which require being restored to the soil--Belgian agriculturists--Statistics of Quetelet pp.Â 66â88 CHAPTER IX. On poisons, miasms, and contagions--Difficulties besetting the questions as to their essential nature and origin--Poison of typhus, of yellow fever, and of the remittent fevers of hot countries--Their appearance at uncertain and distant periods in an aggravated form--Statistics of the recurrence of remittents in the West Indies--Light thrown by chemistry on the subject--Fermentation and putrefaction--Peculiar poisons--Distinction between a miasm and a contagion--Odour perceptible in sick chambers--Ozone, pp.Â 89â98 CHAPTER X. On the servitude of rivers--Practical knowledge of the ancients--Early Roman history a fable--The great social problems of _race_ and _climate_ in some measure unknown to the Romans--First mooted in the reign of Justinian--Present phases of human society--How affected by these two problems--Influence of civilization over the earth pp.Â 99â110 CONCLUDING CHAPTER. Authorâs theory of malaria--Has malaria a real existence?--Action of ferments on the blood--A malarious air not dislodged by storms--Quality of the air over ditches, &c.--Experiments by the Author on microscopic mollusca--Influence of chemistry over physiology--Ammonia--Its volatility and universal prevalence in the air--Its sources and action on living bodies--Danger of drainage-works during summer--Spread of plants through the air--Appearance of strange plants in a country--Conclusion--Various phases of sanitary science--laws of decomposition and composition--Results to man of a false position in nature pp.Â 111â128 APPENDIX pp.Â 129â136 ERRATUM. Page 98, line 2 (note), _should read_ âHydrogen is the lightest known substance; its specific gravity is to that of air 732 to 10,000.â AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN AND INTIMATE NATURE OF MALARIA. INTRODUCTION. In addition to the wide-spread desolating epidemics which appear from time to time, mysterious in their origin, progress, and cessation or disappearance--such, for example, as the plague of Athens, the plague of London in the time of Charles the Second of happy memory, the Indian or Asiatic cholera of modern times, and the disease called influenza, a frequent visitor to Western Europe during the last half-century--there exist localities unceasingly under the influence of a poison inimical to human life. This poison, since it may be so called, is known to haunt the deltas of large rivers, and seems to be always present there; but it is found also, if we may determine its identity by the identity of its deleterious influence on men, in other and very various localities: sometimes it shows itself--and this most commonly--in marshy and fenny countries, where no large rivers exist, at other times by the banks of fresh-water lakes; now it haunts the forest, and now the open plain, where marsh and fen, swamp and decaying vegetation, seem all but absent. As the inhabitants of such localities are especially afflicted with the fevers called intermittent and remittent, it is the most natural thing in the world to ascribe to the locality itself the origin of these diseases. When, however, we attempt to generalize and assign to the same cause in a more concentrated form those terrible fevers which render tropical countries the graves of Europeans, great difficulties arise, and numerous objections, which the best of statisticians, not to mention the simply medical observer, have failed to elucidate and remove. Thus physicians are not agreed as to the identity of the poison under all circumstances, or in other words, demonstrative evidence is still wanting to prove that the cause of fever on the western coasts of Africa is identical with that which has so often in the Antilles destroyed Englandâs chosen troops, decimated her fleets, crippled her power, annihilated her army, as at Walcheren, and broken up the health of many a sturdy yeoman by the banks of the Scheldt, of the Thames and its tributaries. To this poison the term malaria has been applied--a word borrowed from the Italian. This malaria is presumed, whatever it may be, to be the cause (though not exclusively), on evidence almost amounting to a certainty, of the fevers marked by intermissions and remissions; it may also be the cause of the more terrible febrile diseases called the yellow fever, the black vomit, &c., of tropical countries. On this I do not insist. As regards intermitting and remitting febrile affections, we are all but certain that to such localities as I have just alluded to, their origin may be traced, however they may originate elsewhere. A long residence in Holland and Belgium (countries supposed by many to be in an especial manner the hot-bed and active parent of malaria) has enabled me to observe, I trust in an unprejudiced manner, some facts which may have escaped the observation of others. Long resident in that land, on which perished miserably the best equipped army (an army composed of veterans) which ever, perhaps, quitted England for foreign aggression; in that land on which perished the chosen garrisons of the mighty Napoleon; on that spot where they dragged on a miserable existence, or perished in the prime of life; the writer of this essay enjoyed the best of health. Even admitting the full influence of a vigorous constitution, and an innate vitality equal to the neutralization of all malaria, a something must still be ascribed to observation leading him to avoid the hurtful and insalubrious agencies at work around him--agencies ever active, ever seeking to destroy. This information the author has thought might be useful to others, and with this view he submits it to the public.[2] [2] Medical authors of the highest repute are exceedingly vague in their ideas respecting the nature of malaria; nor will it ever be otherwise until the question be taken up by the strictly scientific. Thus, Sir John Forbes says, in his âHoliday:â--âAs the unknown thing which we term malaria or miasma of marshes, under certain circumstances gives rise at one time to simple ague, at another to a fatal remittent fever, &c.; and produces at times a morbid enlargement of the spleen, at others diseases of the liver, &c.; so I can imagine that some other _malaria_, or unknown thing or influence of local origin, may be the cause of ordinary bronchocele, of goitre of the Alps, and also of cretinism.â From the 1st of August to December the author hunted and waded through the marshes of Belgium and Holland in quest of water-fowl; his impunity from fever may be in part ascribed to a hardy training in early life. CHAPTER I. MALARIA--ITS SUPPOSED ORIGIN. Thus stood the question of malaria towards the close of the last century, and for some years afterwards; its existence in certain localities was never questioned--no one pretended to say that the fens of Lincolnshire and of Cambridgeshire, the lowlands of Essex and Kent, the muddy shores of the Scheldt and the Lower Rhine, the delta through which the rapid Rhone finds its way to the Mediterranean, were healthy countries. No one questioned the presence of malaria there, or its power to inflict the plague of intermittent or remittent fever on most strangers and on not a few natives who happened, unfortunately for themselves, to be susceptible of its influence. The poison gave to the Pontine Marshes a world-wide celebrity. Again, of the more terrible febrile diseases of tropical climates, it was suspected by many and boldly asserted by most medical men, that to a malaria identical with that of Europe, but more concentrated by high temperature, they owed their origin. Yet no one up to the period I allude to--no physician, at least--had ascribed to neglected drains, ill-conditioned sewers, imperfectly trapped cesspools, overflowing dead-wells, &c., the origin of a malaria much more destructive than the celebrated malaria of fenny or marshy countries, the malaria, if such it really be, equal to the production of that plague, never absent, at times most destructive--the dreadful typhus[3] of Western Europe. [3] Typhus, now subdivided into two--namely, the true typhus and typhoid fever. At last one man, a shrewd, intelligent, and influential observer, a man of genius, gave to the whole question a new phasis. Since his day his hypothesis (for we shall presently find that as yet it deserves no better name) has undergone a variety of modifications, as was to be expected, in no way, however, affecting the practical deductions originally drawn from it by its author. A brief history of this curious episode in medicine, honoured by some with the pompous title of âa revolution in sanitary science,â will fitly precede the inquiry on which I am about to enter. Like the small white cloud warning the navigator of the approaching tornado, this hypothesis, from its first appearance as a humble essay in a monthly journal, has repeatedly assumed, by force of circumstances, gigantic dimensions. Of it, as of Rumour, it may be truly said, _Vires acquirit eundo_: it gathers strength from motion. As is usual in England, a machinery has been tacked to it of a character most heterogeneous, but withal so heavy as already to threaten to surpass endurance--of the truth of which remark no further evidence need be adduced than the modest demand of six millions sterling to depurate or cleanse the Thames of those very materials which, as a first experiment, and by no means an unprofitable one, the Sanitary Board ordered and compelled the inhabitants of London to throw into it. A brief history of this remarkable phasis of sanitary science, as it is called, may prove acceptable to my readers. CHAPTER II. THEORIES OF MACCULLOCH. About thirty years ago, as I have already remarked, one of the most distinguished practical geologists of this or any other country directed his attention to a subject of much greater difficulty than the classification of rocks, and their subdivision into primary, secondary, volcanic, and transition. His object was to discover the origin or cause of those fatal diseases which, under the names of fever, dysentery, plague, rheumatism, &c., render the position of man on the globe so precarious, his life at times so brief, valueless to himself or to others, his prospects so gloomy; in brief, by tracing to its origin, if possible, the active agent of such woes to man, to destroy its fatal influence by practical hygienic measures. In a word, Dr. Macculloch hoped, by discovering the cause, to devise the means either of effectually destroying malaria--using the term, however, in a sense at that time peculiar to himself--or so to mitigate its effects as to render it less destructive to mankind. He, an acute and original observer, statistician, and scientific man, properly so called, did not require to be instructed as to the lamentable results which the premature death of millions causes to the surviving relatives--results so eloquently and so correctly depicted by the illustrious Quetelet in his work on Man.[4] Of all this he was well aware, and a consciousness of such a condition of humanity, and a firm belief in the opinion that the cause lay in some defect in our social system, remediable by human means, led to those inquiries on which the late Dr. Macculloch based his theory of a universal malaria the cause of most diseases--a theory now adopted in its entirety by a large section of the medical faculty, and by the English Government of the present date. [4] Quetelet, âSur lâHomme.â The theory or theories of Macculloch,[5] as expounded by himself, amounted in fact to this--that a poison, which may be called malaria, is generated by vegetable and animal substances whilst undergoing decomposition or putrefaction, and that to the presence of this poison may be traced most of the diseases afflicting civilized man. In a neglected drain or sewer he saw the cause of typhus, of agues, of skin disease, neuralgias, &c. [5] The late Dr. Macculloch was a distinguished geologist in the employment of Government, representing in himself the department which has now swelled out into the Metropolitan School of Practical Geology, the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn-street, the geological department in connexion with the Ordnance, &c. &c. He resided mostly in London, and moved in the best circles. Though a strictly scientific man, he was a professor also of the conjectural art, having been educated as a medical man. Soon after publishing his first essays on malaria, thrown out as feelers to the profession and the public, he had his misgivings as to the safety of the course he was pursuing. To denounce open sewers, undrained streets, untrapped cesspools, and overflowing dead-wells, was clearly an attack on the proprietors of London houses; and he called one morning in great haste on a distinguished barrister, to consult him as to the possibility of a passage in one of his essays being construed into a ground for an action for libel! How changed now are the views of society in respect of all such matters. These views of Macculloch respecting the origin of malaria and its effects on man, were, when first published, and indeed for many years afterwards, looked on with suspicion by the physicians of that day; they were viewed, in truth, as wildly speculative, and wholly unsupported by facts. This opinion still prevails with many, but they are being rapidly borne down by a host of writers--many, it must not be overlooked, enjoying lucrative official appointments, and who thus have a deep and touching interest in supporting and maintaining the theories of Macculloch. An opportunity will occur in the course of this work of tracing briefly the progress of the mania--for such, to a certain extent, it speedily became--and of assigning the merit or demerit of the movement to those to whom it may be due. Here it is only necessary to allude to it as being in fact the source of all those visionary and Utopian schemes for the entire renovation of the social state of man, alternately advocated or deprecated by a press naturally chiming in with the prevailing public feeling. At times the discussion acquires an almost feverish character--as when, for example, during the present summer, âthe riverâ exhaled an odour more than usually unpleasant; at times it cools down in the presence of a proposal to expend many millions of the public money on some wild, untried scheme, under the superintendence of the very men who deliberately, and despite many warnings, reduced âthe riverâ to its present sad condition--of men who had not the candour or the honesty to admit that, proceeding on the conjectures of Macculloch, they hazarded one of the coarsest experiments ever devised on the health of millions.[6] These were the men whose course of action the Registrar-General endeavoured to palliate, on the plausible ground that, although they poisoned the river, the doing so was much less injurious to the inhabitants of London than to suffer the cesspools to continue any longer buried in the earth, although for the most part hermetically sealed! Thus were they permitted in open day to pollute the surface-drains of the metropolis, converting them into sewers--to render the streets and squares impassable--and finally to convert the river itself into a kind of elongated cesspool! This, says the Registrar-General, is an evil of less magnitude than the permitting the cesspools and dead-wells to remain as they were until gradually and cautiously disposed of by other means. [6] See the admirable speech of Mr. Disraeli in his place in Parliament, on the condition of the Thames. It were easy to show, were it worth while--1st. How the persons to whom I here allude suffered to be withdrawn from the Thames nearly a half of its natural waters before reaching London; 2nd. How next they converted the healthy surface drains of London and of its environs into odious sewers, ignoring the distinction between drain and sewer, a distinction which the most ignorant of day labourers perfectly understands, and heretofore had uniformly respected; 3rd. How they refused to suffer the suicidal act to proceed gradually and slowly, whereby the river, out of its own natural resources, might and would in time have accomplished its own depuration, but as best suiting their ultimate views, issued compulsory edicts on the inhabitants of this great city to empty into the river, and almost at once, the accumulated _excreta_ of a quarter of a century, such being at least the average age of the contents of the cesspools. Thus was demanded of the river a depurative force at the least twenty times greater than under another system would have been required of it. Lastly, to complete a series of experiments so injurious to the public, but so profitable to individuals, the same party proposes further to deprive the stream of all aid in the purification of its waters, by pouring into the German Ocean the entirety of the water which the natural drainage of London, and the valley in which it stands, contribute to it, together with one-half the waters of the river itself, taken from it above the tide-way for the supply of the capital. Thus, by a series of manÅuvres, transparent enough to those who have carefully watched the movements for the last twenty years, its inhabitants are now called on at their own expense to remedy the clumsy experiments of those who occupy positions they could not fill in any country but England.[7] [7] It is right to observe that the unpleasant odour from the Thames, which during the month of June and part of July of the present year so disturbed the olfactory nerves of the Londoners, ceased at once so soon as the Bill for the purification of the Thames passed both Houses of Parliament. What connexion this had with the causes of the odour, and how these odours were so opportunely called forth and so quietly dismissed, I leave to be conjectured by the thoughtful of all classes. At this moment--August, 1858--during the most intense heat, the river is as sweet and fresh as a mountain stream, and has continued so ever since. Some are disposed to ascribe the cessation of the odours (for the stream is not in any way purified) to the throwing of quick-lime into the lower sections of the principal sewers; but if a remedy so simple as this was to be found in such a process, why was it not employed in June and July? It is only the unobserving who are surprised at such things, and who have not happened to observe what follows the spreading of an ancient cesspool over the fields by the road-side, or pouring its contents into a comparatively small river. The Thames is a comparatively small river, and the effects of pouring into it, at a convenient and suitable time (the dog-days, Parliament sitting, &c.), the contents of half-a-dozen cesspools of fifty yearsâ standing, undiluted and at once, would most assuredly give rise to results such as took place in London in June and July. The plot was a very nasty one--it might easily have been traced and the plotters detected: the sewer-makers, under the direction, no doubt, of the various boards, were very active in various quarters; and, not to mention other places, the main street of Hackney, for instance, for nearly a whole day, was by such means rendered quite unbearable. Four-and-twenty centuries ago, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, gave to the world his celebrated treatise, _de aere, aquis et locis_ ÏÎµÏÎ¹ á½Î´Î±ÏÏÎ½ Î±ÎµÏÎ¿Î½ ÎºÎ±Î¹ ÏÎ¿ÏÏÎ½, having for its object an inquiry into the influence of the external world on manâs physical structure and moral nature. To trace the origin of disease to these circumstances, does not seem to have fallen within the scope of his argument; accordingly, it can scarcely be said that any author prior to Macculloch ever considered this matter from a philosophical or physiological point of view, a reason for which may be found, I think, in the absence of a minutely accurate chemical analysis of natural and artificial products. No Ehrenberg had taught mankind the wonders of the living microscopic world of life; even the geology of Macculloch was much behind the profound analyses of the present day. Sober thinking men had rejected the bold speculations of Buffon as to the antiquity of life on the globe, and the demonstrations of the immortal Cuvier were as yet but partially admitted; whilst the theories of Lamark, respecting the vast influence of life in the construction of the crust of the globe, had been suffered quietly to fall into abeyance. Life was thought to be but a recent acquisition by the earth; the Silurian and Cambrian systems of fossils were either unknown or misunderstood. These fossils, at present called âthe first stages of this grand and long series of former accumulations,â must, in the nature of things, yield their claims to others which geology will no doubt soon discover, thus rendering more than probable the theory that life and the globe are coeval. Placed accidentally in a country usually considered as a focus or centre of that malaria or influence, whatever it may be, which man, correctly, perhaps, esteems as the source and cause of remittent and intermittent fevers, I have thought it might prove a labour of some utility to mankind to test the theoretical opinions to which I have alluded, by an appeal to facts submitted to more refined analyses than were known at the period of their promulgation. Time can only show in how far the views I venture to substitute for those now in vogue fairly represent the truth. A power of nature, invisible and impalpable, harasses mankind, destroys armies,[8] desolates districts and countries, slays adult man at the moment when his native land expects from him a suitable return for all the labour, trouble, and expense bestowed on him: to inquire into the nature of this poison is the object, or at least the main object, of this work. If we would rightly understand its essence and properties, it may be admitted that we ought to study carefully in the first instance its manifestations and effects; now these are tolerably well known. The most difficult part of the inquiry remains, that is, the demonstration of the essential nature of the poison or miasm giving rise to such disastrous results. All modern science leads to the conclusion that malaria, whether it originate in circumstances over which man has no control, despite every hygienic effort, or emanate from a combination of circumstances mainly caused by man himself, or be only effectual when it meets with individuals living in contempt of common sanitary precautions, must, by its material nature, be within the range of philosophical research. To Schonbein, a distinguished chemist now alive, we owe the discovery of ozone. Major Tulloch had already hinted at the doctrine that the cause of the frightful mortality in tropical countries was to be looked for in electrical conditions of the atmosphere, of whose nature we as yet are ignorant.[9] Other discoveries in this direction are sure to follow at no distant period. What so obscure a short time ago as electricity? Now look at its position, at least, as a science of application! Life, it is true, is the mystery of mysteries, equally so in its origin and extinction; yet granting this to be a truth, and foreseeing in it all the difficulties of every inquiry directed to elucidate its essential nature, every reflecting mind must be struck with the remarkable discoveries of modern times, all tending to show the close alliance between the chemical and vital phenomena, an alliance wholly unknown to the most gifted of antiquity. The modern world, right or wrong, looks to chemistry for the solution of many great and important problems, the most elevated of which unquestionably is the discovery of the causes rendering certain wide-spread localities of this earth unfit for the habitation of those at least who may not claim them as their natal soil; of which they are not the aborigines.[10] [8] The Walcheren expedition. [9] Rapid changes in the barometric pressure of the atmosphere strongly affect some persons, but the _malaise_ caused does not seem to be of a permanent character. In the spring, in Britain, when north-easterly winds prevail, the amount of skin disease, rheumatism, neuralgia, &c., is sufficiently remarkable, and the blights they cause in plants is a fact known to all. In a work published by Mulder (âWater en Miht,â Amsterdam, p.Â 181), we find it mentioned that Van Swinden investigated the mutations of atmospheric pressure as a cause of sickness, and arrived at the conclusion that a low pressure was not the cause of sickness and fever. He remarked that although there had been many years in which much sickness prevailed, seemingly connected with hot and dry weather, the barometer had varied but little. Thus, at Haarlem, in the period between 1755 and 1780, the maximum was 30Â·9, the minimum or lowest, 28Â·0. The summer of 1779 was extremely hot, and a fever epidemic appeared which continued for three years. It was ascribed to the draining of several polders. Several learned societies made reports on the subject of this fever, but they elicited no new facts. It was generally agreed that the deeper the mud and turf containing vegetable matter were under water, the less was the sickness resulting from the draining. A Mynheer Driessen called public attention to the circumstance that on the coasts of Holland there were many places where animal and vegetable matter had accumulated and was in a state of rottenness or fermentation; and in this state he suggested that being carried inland by strong westerly winds, it might give rise to sickness. It is remarkable, however, that both the influenza and cholera progressed against the prevailing westerly winds. [10] Men in a state of nature seem to resist malaria. Thus the natives of Newfoundland and of Canada generally, and indeed of all America, withstood readily the malaria of their native land, but perished when brought within the influence of European domesticity. We must allow, however, for the power of race. On the other hand, it seems almost certain that the old Roman armies withstood the influence of climate much more effectually than modern armies do. They lived generally in camps, which they themselves fortified. Of their sanitary regulations we know nothing, but of their camps we know that no English or French soldiers could possibly stand their ground for any length of time similarly encamped. A legion (about 12,000 men) encamped on a space of 700 yards square; what became of the refuse of the camp, and how was it disposed of? No Crimean disasters ever happened to CÃ¦sar; he could not afford to lose his veteran Legions as we lost the Guards. CHAPTER III. THE ORIENTAL PLAGUE--QUESTION OF CONTAGION. A very few years ago it was the general opinion, even of the best informed, that epidemic diseases originate in atmospheric influences over which man has no control. A reservation seems, however, to have been made in respect of the Oriental, or as some term it, the African, plague, a malady the most frightful to which man is liable. Writers of the highest order traced to a damp, hot, and stagnating air, generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives, the fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors. The disease was reported to have first appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. Thence tracing a double path it spread to the east, over Syria, Persia, and India, and penetrated to the west, along the coast of Africa, and thence to the continent of Europe. But in order to explain how it spread, it was necessary to invent another theory and add it to the first; the disease once generated, was said to spread by contagion. It is related in âThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,â[11] that in the spring of the second year (after its first appearance), Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence. It did not reach the capital of the empire at once, but travelled slowly and irregularly, after the manner of modern cholera. In the admirable descriptions of the immortal historian, we can trace all the symptoms of the true Oriental plague, identical in its phenomena and effects with the sufficiently numerous visitations which have since occurred, and with that no doubt which, lately originating at Bengazzi, and spreading to Tripoli, once more threatens the European family of nations. In a damp, hot, stagnating air, observes the historian, who in his account follows Procopius, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, ânot less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives.â But the ferment and putrefaction thus created scarcely accounts for the origin of the disease, and its extension north-wards into the coldest regions of Europe is inexplicable on such a hypothesis, though aided by the modern hypothesis that its propagation is due simply to the neglect of sanitary regulations, a theory now happily extended to all zymotic diseases. Passing over the question as to the contagious nature of plague, typhus, cholera, scarlatina, measles, a question still undecided, and adhering simply to facts, we are assured by Procopius, the fidelity of whose descriptions the great historian seems disposed to vouch for, that the disease always spread âfrom the sea coast to the inland country; the most sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited; the places which had escaped the fury of its first passage were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. The winds might diffuse that subtle venom; but unless the atmosphere be previously disposed for its reception, the plague would soon expire in the cold and temperate climates of the earth. Such was the universal corruption of the air, that the pestilence which burst forth in the fifteenth of Justinian, was not checked or alleviated by any difference of the seasons. In time, its first malignity was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of fifty-two years that mankind recovered their health, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find that during three months, five, and at length ten thousand persons died each day in Constantinople; that many cities of the East were left vacant, and that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian; and his reign is disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired, in some of the fairest countries of the globe.â [11] Gibbon, vol.Â vii., p.Â 421, Milmanâs edition. The plague of the time of Justinian is known to us only through the medium of the Greek and Roman writers. We know nothing as to how it affected the remote East, or whether that portion of the earth escaped. No record exists to prove or disprove the passage across the Atlantic, in ancient times, of plagues and pestilences, such as we know now overleap with ease that seemingly impassable barrier. The history of cholera in its progress from the East, though drawn up by skilful official writers, tells us as little of its real nature as Procopius did of the plague. It resembles in some respects the history of ancient Egypt, each discovery merely adding another enigma to the already existing and unexplained. Its propagation by contagion is still denied by the first of medical authorities, and yet it must be admitted that it pursues in a mysterious manner the paths of commerce, as if by the abuse of trade, plagues, which would otherwise become extinct in the land of their origin, are diffused over the continents of the world.[12] [12] The cholera, in so far as I know, has not as yet penetrated beyond the tropic into the southern hemisphere. The propagation of the plague by contagion was, as we have already seen, distinctly denied by Procopius, and in this opinion he seems, as in modern times, to have been backed by a majority of the people. The immortal historian of âThe Decline and Fallâ did not partake of Procopiusâ doubts. âContagion,â he remarks, âis the inseparable symptom of the plague, which, by mutual respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to the lungs and stomach of those who approach them. While the philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular that the existence of a real danger should have been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short and partial experience, that the infection could not be gained by the closest conversation; and this persuasion might support the assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the contagion; and those salutary precautions to which Europe is indebted for her safety, were unknown to the government of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces. From Persia to France the nations were mingled and infected by wars and emigration, and the pestilential odour which lurks for years in a bale of cotton was imported by the abuse of trade into the most distant regions.â[13] [13] In the _Times_ of to-day (September 8th), the contagious character of the plague is stoutly denied by one who seems to write from authority, or who at least is evidently well backed by a strong party. The writer is evidently one of the Commissioners who met in Paris some years ago to inquire into the working of the quarantine laws. I offer no opinion on the subject,--though âone-ideaâ men, they have a show of truth on their side, and especially in this, that they adopt the popular view of the subject when they deny the contagious nature of the plague. They boldly affirm that plague only spreads in places where sanitary regulations are despised--a consoling and useful theory, even if it were not true. They made the same assertions of cholera--their hypothesis proved sadly at fault. The pump-well water-drinking theory is the latest expression of medical theorists in respect of the origin of the cholera: there never was a greater delusion. It does not merit a refutation, and is quite unworthy the professors of even a conjectural art. That the symptoms of cholera strongly resemble the action of a violent poison taken into the stomach, is not to be questioned, and that water may have been the vehicle of such a poison is neither impossible nor even improbable. The iced-water drinking population of Paris, of Palermo, and of many Sicilian and Italian towns, suffered terribly from cholera. Nor does it spare the temperate Mahometan, upon whom cleanliness is enjoined as an article of his faith. Still, the wholly inexplicable facts in the spread of cholera (and the same may be said of plague, typhus, and yellow fever) are far too numerous to admit of any generalization. Whilst the cholera spared Birmingham--at the time neither properly drained nor sewered, it nearly depopulated Bilston, a healthy town situated only a few miles from Birmingham, hundreds in the meantime travelling between the two places every hour of the day. It swept off the inhabitants of one side of a street in Deptford, leaving those on the other side unscathed. All drank of the same waters. The theory merits no attention. Thus has been bandied about from the earliest times to the present day, the great question of the origin of the pestilential diseases, and their contagious properties when once produced. The question still remains unsettled, nor has the advent of the cholera in modern times contributed in the slightest degree to bring the disputation to a demonstrative issue. Are they of terrestrial or atmospheric origin properly, or do both contribute their share towards the production of pestilences? How originated the cholera, and how does it spread? These questions may still be asked, and when asked must remain unanswered. The share ascribed to man in the production and propagation of this and similar diseases is mainly the object of this inquiry, and to that I shall adhere as much as possible. Men, ever anxious to discover the causes of events, ascribed the origin of the plague in the reign of Justinian to the putrefaction of locusts; but the same event may and has happened without being productive of similar results--without, indeed, causing any disease whatever, as if the poison, though present, were ineffectual unless aided by other circumstances at present unknown to man. Those who have seen cholera only as it prevails on the rotten banks of the Ganges, ascribe its origin to heat and putrefaction, its extension to the habits of a densely-congregated people. They forget, or choose not to remember, that it raged in the depth of winter in the cold regions of Russia and of Scotland, in thinly-populated villages, in hamlets, and insulated cottages, scattered over the elevated yet cultivated estates of noble and wealthy proprietors.[14] Those who have studied the phenomena of typhus only in the horrid slums of Glasgow, in the wynds and closes of cold and bleak Edinburgh--from which it is never absent, occasionally raging with something like the virulence of a plague--ascribe the origin and extension of the disease to cold and hunger, to a deficiency of animal food, and to a contempt for all sanitary arrangements; but they do not choose to remember that a few years ago typhus in its worst form appeared in the south-eastern angle of England, spreading thence through the midland counties, deeply affecting the population of hamlets and villages the salubrity of whose site was unquestioned. And if negative evidence be held sufficient to refute Procopiusâ theory of the origin of the true plague, we have but to look into the pages of a modern traveller, whose official position naturally adds to the value of his testimony. Mr. Barrow, in describing a visitation of locusts to the Cape of Good Hope, makes the following curious remark:--âTheir last departure was rather singular. All the full-grown insects were driven into the sea by a tempestuous north-west wind, and were afterwards cast upon the beach, where it is said they formed a bank of three or four feet high, which extended from the mouth of the Bosjesman river to that of the Becca, a distance of nearly fifty English miles; and it is asserted that when this mass became putrid, and the wind was at south-east, the stench was sensibly felt in several parts of the Sneuwberg.â The distance over which the stench was felt must have been at least a hundred miles, the range of the Sneuwbergen being at about this distance from the coast. [14] It raged most severely in Scotland, in the remarkably healthy village of Prestonpans and Fisher-row; in the highest and healthiest parts of Edinburgh; amongst the peasantry and miners scattered over the high grounds of Midlothian, belonging to the Marquis of Lothian. These people lived comfortably in detached cottages amongst the fields. It is hardly necessary for me to observe, that no disease followed the destruction and putrefaction of these locusts. The colony of South Africa still continues free from plague and cholera, and many other diseases afflicting the most favoured of European lands; consumption, scrofula, and fever are all but unknown. I am not aware that the inhabitants are in any way remarkable for their sanitary arrangements, whilst of the Hottentots it may with truth be said, that they are at once the healthiest and dirtiest people in the world. Thus, after the lapse of many centuries, the great questions debated in the time of Justinian--may we not rather say in the days of Thucydides?--surge up again whenever a new plague appears on the earth. The professors of âthe conjectural art,â anxious to vindicate their claim to activity, and to share in the laudations bestowed on the superior intelligence of the present day, offer at present a highly consolatory view, not only as to the origin of these diseases, but as to their speedy suppression. They argue that, but for the neglect of hygienic measures, such influences or poisons would either not arise, or would pass on their course, leaving the nations unscathed. In the meantime, it is prudent to recall to the recollection of those who arrive rashly at conclusions such as these--who theorize on narrow local ground--who are sanguine enough to look forward to the speedy extinction of all zymotic diseases, that pestilential and destructive epidemics are not confined to man; that, under the form of murrains, they destroy the beasts of the field. In the murrain of 1747, it is stated on authority that 30,000 cattle died in Cheshire in the course of half a year. The marsh districts suffered most; and it has even been conjectured that such epizootic diseases usually originate amidst swamps and malarious districts; but of this we have no proofs. Even the harvests to which man looks for sustenance are not spared--nor the vine; the life-destroying principle, attacking these lower forms of life, cannot well be traced to the neglect of hygienic measures on the part of man, or of the animals or plants themselves; and yet in the midst of these bogs and marshes which undeniably give origin to some forms of fever, the buffalo, the ox, the camel, the elephant, and the wild of all species, live and thrive. Thus the question of the origin of disease is complicated _ab origine_; the origin of typhus--that scourge and pest of the nations inhabiting the temperate regions, more especially of Western Europe, and of the British Isles in particular--is absolutely unknown. To affect to trace it to a foul drain, an uncleansed sewer, an untrapped cesspool, a laystall, a collection of neglected rubbish, is clearly against the evidence and the daily experience of thousands; but all are agreed that in certain fenny and marshy countries fevers prevail--intermittent in temperate, remittent in ardent
{'title': 'An Enquiry Into the Origin and Intimate Nature of Malaria by Wilson', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}