Dr. Mac Culloch on Malaria on Ship-board, Gl 



which has undertaken to deny the existence of contagion, even 

 in the plague. I should be among the last for another reason-— 

 and that is, experience ; a wide experience in the ordnance 

 transport service during the war, both of the fact itself, and of 

 the value of fumigations in exterminating the contagion. Yet 

 it will be found, on a most careful examination, that this disease, 

 typhus, forms a very small portion of all the fevers occurring 

 on ship-board, and particularly of late years, since the great 

 improvements which have been made in the economy of ships, 

 the improved education of our naval surgeons, and the better 

 understanding on the subject of contagion and its management, 

 which has taken place in modern times. 



^^ Not to go over again all the reasons for this opinion, which 

 can be extracted partly from this paper, and partly from the 

 work on malaria, and that on marsh fever, it is almost a suffi- 

 cient general proof of it, that the fever of ships occurs chiefly in 

 warm climates, and in tropical regions of course most fre- 

 quently ; or generally in the circumstances where malaria is 

 existent. To a certain degree, this has been familiarly known 

 to naval surgeons from all times, as could not fail, in the case 

 of crews, whether in boats or otherwise, subjected to the action 

 of a pestilent marsh, a river, or shore. And while it has long 

 been understood that the common " yellow fever" of the West 

 Indies is not a contagious disorder, there could not have been 

 any difficulty in perceiving that seamen on board, exposed to 

 the same causes, must have suffered from a similar disease. 

 Yet, in other circumstances, and where the disease has been 

 precisely the same in nature, if perhaps differing in some ap- 

 pearances, it has been considered a typhus ; a mistake far too 

 easy to make, when the manner in which such a fever appears 

 to spread in a ship is considered, when the characteristics of 

 the two kinds of fever are often not to be distinguished, and 

 when also, if Pringle is right, the marsh fever can, under con- 

 finement, even produce the contagious one, or is actually con- 

 verted into it. 



The particularly evil consequences of this mistake, in such 

 a case, are apparent ; though, perhaps, the actual treatment of 

 the patient will not be much affected by the error. The cause 

 remaining unknown, there can be no fit method of prevention 



