The Net Results Of Laboratory Investigation, According To The French
Doctors, Is That The Mycetozoic Malarial Bacillus, The Microbe Of
Paludism, Is Amoeboid In Its Movements, Acting On The Red
Corpuscles, Leaving Nothing Of Them But The Dark Pigment Found In
The Skin And Organs Of Malarial Subjects.
{517} The German doctors
make a practice of making microscopic examinations of the blood of a
patient, saying that
The microbes appear at the commencement of an
attack of fever, increase in quantity as the fever increases, and
decrease as it decreases, and from these investigations they are
able to judge fairly accurately how many remissions may be expected;
in fact to judge of the severity of the case which, taken with the
knowledge that quinine only affects malarial microbes at a certain
stage of their existence, is helpful in treatment.
There is, I may remark, a very peculiar point regarding haematuric
disease, the most deadly form of West Coast fever. This disease, so
far as we know, has always been present on the South-West Coast, at
Loando, the Lower Congo and Gaboon, but it is said not to have
appeared in the Rivers until 1881, and then to have spread along the
West Coast. My learned friend, Dr. Plehn, doubts this, and says
people were less observant in those days, but the symptoms of this
fever are so distinct, that I must think it also totally impossible
for it not to have been differentiated from the usual remittent or
intermittent by the old West Coasters if it had occurred there in
former times with anything like the frequency it does now; but we
will leave these theoretical and technical considerations and turn
to the practical side of the question.
You will always find lots of people ready to give advice on fever,
particularly how to avoid getting it, and you will find the most
dogmatic of these are people who have been singularly unlucky in the
matter, or people who know nothing of local conditions. These
latter are the most trying of all to deal with. They tell you,
truly enough no doubt, that the malaria is in the air, in the
exhalations from the ground, which are greatest about sunrise and
sunset, and in the drinking water, and that you must avoid chill,
excessive mental and bodily exertion, that you must never get
anxious, or excited, or lose your temper. Now there is only one -
the drinking water - of this list that you can avoid, for, owing to
the great variety and rapid growth of bacteria encouraged by the
tropical temperature, and the aqueous saturation of the atmosphere
from the heavy rainfall, and the great extent of swamp, etc., it is
practically impossible to destroy them in the air to a satisfactory
extent. I was presented by scientific friends, when I first went to
the West Coast, with two devices supposed to do this. One was a
lamp which you burnt some chemical in; it certainly made a smell
that nothing could live with - but then I am not nothing, and there
are enough smells on the Coast now.
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