Among The Barotse
I Found A Disease Called Manassah, Which Closely Resembles
That Of The `Foeda Mulier' Of History.
Equally unknown is stone in the bladder and gravel.
I never met with a case,
though the waters are often so strongly impregnated with sulphate of lime
that kettles quickly become incrusted internally with the salt;
and some of my patients, who were troubled with indigestion, believed that
their stomachs had got into the same condition. This freedom from calculi
would appear to be remarkable in the negro race, even in the United States;
for seldom indeed have the most famed lithotomists there
ever operated on a negro.
The diseases most prevalent are the following: pneumonia,
produced by sudden changes of temperature, and other inflammations,
as of the bowels, stomach, and pleura; rheumatism; disease of the heart -
but these become rare as the people adopt the European dress -
various forms of indigestion and ophthalmia; hooping-cough comes frequently;
and every year the period preceding the rains is marked
by some sort of epidemic. Sometimes it is general ophthalmia,
resembling closely the Egyptian. In another year it is a kind of diarrhoea,
which nothing will cure until there is a fall of rain, and any thing
acts as a charm after that. One year the epidemic period was marked
by a disease which looked like pneumonia, but had the peculiar symptom
strongly developed of great pain in the seventh cervical process.
Many persons died of it, after being in a comatose state
for many hours or days before their decease.
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