MALARIA. 3; i 



The formation of an abscess, an attack of tonsilitis, etc., are usually at- 

 tended by chills and fever, which may recur at more or less regular in- 

 tervals. Indeed, in certain cases of pyaemia the febrile phenomena are 

 so similar to those of a malarial attack that a mistake in diagnosis is no 

 unusual occurrence. Finally, I may say that it is the fashion with 

 many persons and with some physicians to ascribe a variety of symptoms, 

 due to various causes, to 'malaria' and to prescribe quinine as a general 

 panacea. Thus a gentleman who has been at the club until one or two 

 o'clock at night and has smoked half a dozen cigars — not to mention 

 beer and cheese sandwiches as possible factors — reports to his doctor the 

 next morning with a dull headache, a furred tongue and a loss of ap- 

 petite which he is unable to account for except upon the supposition that 

 he has 'malaria/ Again the symptoms arising from indigestion, from 

 crowd-poisoning, from sewer-gas-poisoning, from ptomaine-poisoning 

 (auto-infection), etc., are often ascribed to 'malaria' and quinine is pre- 

 scribed, frequently with more or less benefit, for the usefulness of this 

 drug is not limited to its specific action in the destruction of the malarial 

 parasite. 



As stated at the outset, it is evident, in the present state of our 

 knowledge, that the term 'malaria' is a misnomer, either as applied to 

 the cause of the periodic fevers or as used to designate this class of 

 fevers. It would be more logical to use the name plasmodium fever and 

 to speak of a plasmodium intermittent or remittent, rather than of a 

 malarial intermittent. But it will, no doubt, be difficult to displace a 

 term which has been so long in use, which up to the present time has 

 had the sanction of the medical profession, and which expresses the 

 popular idea as to the origin of that class of fevers which we now know 

 to be due to a blood-parasite, introduced through the agency of mos- 

 quitoes of the genus Anopheles. 



