That It Has Occurred There From Time To Time There
Can Be No Question:
At Fernando Po in 1862 and 1866, in Senegal
pretty frequently; and at least one epidemic at Bonny was true
yellow fever.
But in the case of each of these outbreaks it is said
to have been imported from South America, into Fernando Po, by ships
from Havana, and into Bonny by a ship which had on her previous run
been down the South American ports with a cargo of mules. The
litter belonging to this mule cargo was not cleared out of her until
she got into Bonny, when it was thrown overside into the river, and
then the yellow fever broke out. But, on the other hand, South
America taxes West Africa - the Guinea Coast - with having first sent
out yellow fever in the cargoes of slaves. This certainly is a
strange statement, because the African native rarely has malarial
fever severely - he has it, and you are often informed So-and-so has
got yellow fever, but he does not often die of it, merely is truly
wretched and sick for a day or so, and then recovers. {516}
Regarding the haematuria there is also controversy. A very
experienced and excellent authority doubts whether this is entirely
a malarial fever, or whether it is not, in some cases at any rate,
brought on by over-doses of quinine, and Dr. Plehn asserts, and his
assertions are heavily backed up by his great success in treating
this fever, that quinine has a very bad influence when the
characteristic symptoms have declared themselves, and that it should
not be given. I hesitate to advise this, because I fear to induce
any one to abandon quinine, which is the great weapon against
malaria, and not from any want of faith in Dr. Plehn, for he has
studied malarial fevers in Cameroon with the greatest energy and
devotion, bringing to bear on the subject a sound German mind
trained in a German way, and than this, for such subjects, no better
thing exists. His brother, also a doctor, was stationed in Cameroon
before him, and is now in the German East African possessions,
similarly working hard, and when these two shall publish the result
of their conjoint investigations, we shall have the most important
contribution to our knowledge of malaria that has ever appeared. It
is impossible to over-rate the importance of such work as this to
West Africa, for the man who will make West Africa pay will be the
scientific man who gives us something more powerful against malaria
than quinine. It is too much to hope that medical men out at work
on the Coast, doctoring day and night, and not only obliged to
doctor, but to nurse their white patients, with the balance of their
time taken up by giving bills of health to steamers, wrestling with
the varied and awful sanitary problems presented by the native town,
etc., can have sufficient time or life left in them to carry on
series of experiments and of cultures; but they can and do supply to
the man in the laboratory at home grand material for him to carry
the thing through; meanwhile we wait for that man and do the best we
can.
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