480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



indicate the agency of a catalytic, or fermentative process. In yellow 

 fever the temperature of the body rises to 105, and after death often 

 to 112 ; the progress of decomposition separates the serum from the 

 red blood-globules (whence the chlorotic hue of the skin), and the 

 bodies of the victims need immediate interment on account of the ra- 

 pidity with which putrefaction begins, or rather completes, its work. 

 The clinical study of the disease in such towns as Vera Cruz and New 

 Orleans has preserved the record of many curious cases of molecular 

 life after somatic death. Dr. Bennett Dowler ("New York Journal 

 of Medicine," 1846) mentions the case of an Irishman whose arms, 

 after the cessation of respiration, rose and fell with a rhythmical mo- 

 tion, and of a Kentuckian whose flexor muscles, four hours after death, 

 reacted against the slightest mechanical stimulation. The symptoms 

 of ordinary " chills and fevers " can be temporarily suppressed by 

 antiseptic drugs quinine, arsenic, strychnine, ferro-cyanide of iron 

 in fact, by all chemicals that would arrest a process of decomposition. 

 Hence also the prophylactic effect of alcohol (" tonic bitters ") and 

 of Nature's great antise]:>tic, frost. That marsh-miasma is only an 

 adjuvant cause of endemic fevers can be abundantly demonstrated by 

 the comparative study of the typographical and climatic conditions of 

 the chief fever-centers, as well as by many unmistakable analogies of 

 " climatic fevers " and certain enteric diseases which can be traced to 

 purely subjective causes. The swampiest districts of Central and 

 South America the Peninsula of Yucatan, Tehuantepec, the Bra- 

 zilian province of Entre-Rios, the Orinoco Valley, the " Gran Chaco," 

 or monster-swamp, between Bolivia and Paraguay enjoy an almost 

 perfect immunity from pyrexial diseases, while Vera Cruz and Per- 

 nambuco with their zone of barren sand-hills, or La Guayra, Havana, 

 and Rio Janeiro, with their mountainous vicinity, are subject to yearly 

 visits of the plague. During our last two epidemics the vast Arkansas 

 river-swamps, and the coast-fens of Georgia, Florida, and Texas, es- 

 caped, while Vicksburg and Memphis, on their dry bluffs, and Chatta- 

 nooga, at an elevation of six hundred feet above sea-level, suffered 

 more in proportion to their populations than any place this side of 

 Vera Cruz. During every fever-epidemic the focus of the disease 

 seems to be some commercial city of the tropics or sub-tropics, a town 

 uniting torrid summer climate with the presence of a large number of 

 northern foreigners. 



In all fevers ascribed to a malarial origin the success of the con- 

 ventional mode of treatment depends chiefly upon the efficacy of 

 chemical antiseptics which temporarily suppress or palliate the symp- 

 toms of the disease, but (aside from the deleterious after-effects of such 

 drugs) the disease itself can be cured only by the removal of the 

 cause. That cause is the inability of the vital powers to withstand 

 the influence of moist heat from within and without. The proper 

 method of cure, therefore, consists in diminishing the thermal prod- 



