Dr. Mac Gulloch on Malaria on Ship-board. 39 



place. The fact, nevertheless, is such. The true remittent 

 fever is not indeed unmarked or unknown : but it is most cer- 

 tain that the very great majority of cases are termed, as they 

 are considered, typhus ; while if navy practitioners take pre- 

 cautions against contagion under those occurrences, it has been 

 very common among others to express surprise that the disease 

 had not been communicated to the attendants. Sometimes, 

 indeed, the practitioner imagines that his precaution has been 

 the cause of stopping this anticipated but imaginary process ; 

 but it has also very often happened that where, from situation, 

 from exposure to a common exciting cause, in an active and 

 present malaria, many persons in one house have suffered, 

 simultaneously, or rather in succession, the fever has been 

 pronounced as propagated from one individual to another 

 through a large family, when the truth has been that each was 

 subjected to his own distinct marsh fever from a common ex- 

 posure : and it is this which explains also that which has so 

 often been a cause of surprise ; namely, the occurrence of 

 single cases of fever, in a numerous family, or in a populous 

 neighbourhood, while perhaps no precautions have been taken 

 against its propagation ; just as it accounts for the innumerable 

 instances in which the so called typhus fevers, received into 

 hospitals, have not spread. Such fevers could not have been 

 propagated, because they were not contagious, or were not 

 typhus fever; while I need scarcely say to Physicians how 

 very easy it is to mistake the continuous marsh fever for the 

 true typhus, or, equally, that in which the remissions are 

 slightly marked ; and very particularly in the ordinary routine 

 of practice, often hurried : an error, also, the more easy, should 

 the prejudices, habits, and general impression of the practi- 

 tioner on this subject have given his mind a general bias to 

 this belief, the belief in contagion or in contagious fever as a 

 common, or as the more common disease. 



And that this has been a recent belief in England, or rather 

 that it has been an opinion gradually spreading or accumu- 

 lating for many years, must be well known to all observing 

 physicians, while it would not be without interest to inquire 

 how much it has depended on the recently augmented use of 

 the term typhus, and its even popular adoption by the multi- 



