Tfilf Dr. Mac CuUoch on Malaria on Ship-board, 



composition. I then quoted the case ofsugar-ships as especially 

 in point ; and a further examination of facts has confirmed 

 me in the belief, that the general fact is not to be questioned, 

 and that this is the real cause of those fevers in ships, which 

 are so commonly attributed to contagion deemed typhus ; never 

 suspected to arise from malaria, and consequently not supposed 

 to be, by any possibility, remittent or marsh fevers, because 

 occurring at sea, or in circumstances where no exposure to an 

 unhealthy coast has taken place. Not to accumulate specific 

 cases, which ought really to be unnecessary, I will here note 

 but one remarkable fact bearing on this point, where an officer 

 was suddenly struck with what is called apoplexy on the open- 

 ing of a water-cask, and has remained partially paralytic for 

 life : the first effect, and the whole subsequent disease, being 

 precisely what occurs in France and Italy so frequently, from 

 a sudden and transient exposure to a peculiarly virulent or 

 condensed malaria. 



This cause then, or bilge-water, is that source of malaria 

 and fever in ships which may be deemed universal, because 

 it can occur in almost any climate, and, under neglect, in any 

 ship, even at sea, and without the least communication with 

 the land. And if it should thus be produced, it can scarcely be 

 guarded against, from the very circumstances of a ship ; so 

 that it is peculiarly necessary that the cause itself should be 

 remedied in limine. And it is least of all surprising that the 

 fevers occurring from this cause, this mode of the presence of 

 malaria, should have been considered as typhus, and as the 

 produce of a contagion, casually received into the ship, and con- 

 tinuing to act from adhering to the vessel itself or its furniture. 

 It must always have appeared as the produce of the vessel 

 itself, which it in fact was 5 while the unsuspected cause has 

 led, in anxious hands, to fumigations, whitewashing, scower- 

 ing, and all those other obvious remedies against contagion, 

 which must ever have been inefficacious, as they, in fact, have 

 proved ; because no precautions of this nature could have 

 checked the action of a poison generated every hour, and sup- 

 plied as fast as even ventilation could dissipate it. 



And if this very circumstance made it appear that the cause 

 was contagion, so that has often appeared to be confirmed by 



