184 SYMPTOMS OF MALARIAL FEVER. 



applied themselves to their medicine, I assured them that all the quinine 

 mixture in the world would not counteract exposure such as they had 

 undergone. They returned to their station in a great fright, and had 

 hardly got there before they had such severe fever as almost sent them 

 both to England. It is thus that fever often comes to be made the spectre 

 it is to the inexperienced. One gets it through reckless carelessness, and 

 speaks of the deadliness of the jungles he visited, whilst he might have 

 lived in them in safety for a month with proper care. I presume malarial 

 fevers are similar in most parts of India, and that the following observa- 

 tions, though made particularly with regard to Mysore, will apply equally 

 elsewhere : — 



Fever in Mysore is of two kinds : that prevailing at certain seasons in 

 open country, where there are no jungles within many miles, and which 

 seems due entirely to the sudden variations of temperature attendant on the 

 changes of season ; and the more noxious kind, similar, but more severe, in 

 its symptoms, contracted in jungle localities, and apparently the result of 

 miasma or poison arising from decaying vegetable matter. These fevers are 

 very seldom fatal to Europeans, except the latter in aggravated cases ; but 

 they are most difficult to shake off, recurring at varying stated periods, often 

 for many years. They debilitate the system, and may bring into prominence 

 any other weak point the patient has. 



Amongst natives, on the other hand, malarial fevers are exceedingly 

 fatal. Far more succumb to them every year than to cholera and small-pox 

 put together. As fever, however, is insidious in its working, and is not 

 infectious, it causes little alarm, and comparatively little is heard of it. It 

 appears to be owing to the greater natural strength of the European consti- 

 tution that Englishmen withstand, or throw it off, where natives succumb. 

 Nursing in the stages where the patient is inclined, through prostration, 

 to do nothing but die quietly, also puts to right those who, if left as the 

 native frequently is without suitable nourishment and attention, would fare 

 little better than he does. 



Fever is most prevalent about the commencement and end of the rainy 

 season. The alternations in temperature are then considerable, and the 

 winds in the open country are chilly. In the jungles, the decaying vegeta- 

 tion is stirred up by light rains which are insufficient to wash it away. The 

 jungles are most healthy during the hot weather, when the undergrowth has 

 been burnt. This burning is the grand destroyer of all malaria, and the 

 sportsman may tramp the then begrimed forests in perfect safety. 



Fever generally shows itself in a week or ten days after the person has 

 been subjected to the influence that has caused it. It begins with lassitude 



