PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND HYGIENE 



It was thought to be an effluvium (mala aria) 

 which pervaded the night air. Consumption is 

 yet reaping its hundreds of thousands of vic- 

 tims because of the ancient dread of the night 

 air. Walk through the streets at night and wit- 

 ness the bedroom windows closed against it. 

 Malaria has been the handmaiden of consump- 

 tion from time immemorial. It was perhaps 

 a chief causative factor in the decadence of 

 the Greek and Roman civilizations. Then 

 some English and Italian physicians went into 

 the malarial swamps and lived in little houses 

 which were freely opened to the night air but 

 screened against mosquitoes. The people of 

 Italy assured them that they were going to 

 certain death. But they lived in these swamps 

 in perfect health. They caught mosquitoes and 

 dissected them, finding abundant malarial 

 parasites. Some of these observers took mos- 

 quitoes back to England, and there permitted 

 the mosquitoes to bite them, as a result of which 

 bites they developed in England malaria from 

 which they had been spared in the Pontine 

 marshes. 



Cerebro-spinal meningitis is caused by a 

 specific diplococcus which sets up an inflamma- 

 tion of the coverings of the brain and spinal 



85 



Cerebro- 

 spinal 

 meningitis. 



