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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 585. 



peeially Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ala- 

 bama, Florida, and New Orleans in par- 

 ticular, as it has been and will be mistaken 

 for yellow fever. I only hope that this 

 second paper on this fever may at least 

 save a few lives, and call the attention of 

 physicians to its proper recognition, treat- 

 ment and prophylaxis. 



Synonyms : ' Summer-autumn fever, ' 

 'pernicious malarial fever,' 'congestive 

 malarial fever,' 'hemorrhagic malarial 

 fever,' 'up-river yellow fever.' 



Geographical Distt-ibution.— This is a 

 fever that prevails in nearly all parts of 

 the world where the Anopheles mosquito is 

 found, influenced to a greater or less extent 

 by climate; a pseudo-epidemic fever that 

 prevails in tropical countries the year 

 round. In semi-tropical and temperate 

 climates it prevails from about July 1 to 

 frost. In some years it prevails as an epi- 

 demic in tropical and semi-tropical coun- 

 tries, this being due to conditions favorable 

 to the Anopheles mosquito. The condi- 

 tions favorable to mosquitoes are frequent, 

 light rains, and a temperature of about 

 70° to 90° F. I am quite certain a lower 

 temperature is not incompatible with its 

 spread, as I have found in this city Ano- 

 pheles quite active at a lower temperature, 

 but frost seems to cause the hibernation 

 of nearly all of our mosquitoes. Extremely 

 dry hot weather is unfavorable to the 

 breeding of mosquitoes of all kinds; hence 

 there is not as much malarial fever in the 

 heat of summer. 



History.— The history of malarial fever 

 dates back from the time almost beyond 

 history. The physicians of Egypt in the 

 time of the Pharoahs wrote of it. In some 

 of my past reading, and I am sorry to say 

 that I have forgotten where I noticed it, I 

 read that a physician of Egypt, whose name 

 was Mah, stated that malaria was a disease 

 produced by a parasite in the blood, but 

 the organism was so small that the human 



eye was unable to see it. It was due to 

 the labors of the immortal Laveran, a 

 French army surgeon stationed at Con- 

 stantine, Algeria, that the malarial para- 

 site was identified and proven to be the 

 cause of malaria (in 1880). Mechel in 

 1847 also described them, the ovoid bodies 

 and pigment. Our own Professor Joseph 

 Jones also did the same a few years later, 

 he using the pigment as a means of diag- 

 nosis. He also shows quite a good rough 

 sketch of malaria parasite in his 'Medical 

 Surgical Memoirs. ' It would be impossible 

 for me to even read the names of men 

 identified with the history of malarial 

 fever. I must, however, mention Welch, 

 Grasin, Councilman, Thayer, Manson, 

 Young, Ross, Warner, Bastanelli, Golgi, 

 Marchiafava, Colli and many, many others 

 who labored hard and long to solve the 

 malarial problem. 



Etiology. — The cause of testivo-autumnal 

 fever is a parasite, a living micro-organism, 

 a protozoon in the blood which enters the 

 red blood corpuscles and destroys them, 

 and in time is destroyed by the white blood 

 corpuscles if the patient lives; otherwise, 

 the destruction of the red blood corpuscles 

 and toxins formed by the parasite kills the 

 patient if proper remedies are not used, or if 

 the white blood corpuscles are not sufficient- 

 ly strong to overpower the parasites. Such 

 cases are spontaneous cures. This parasite 

 of sestivo-autumnal fever was studied ex- 

 tensively by Welch, and named by him the 

 Hcematozoon falciparum. I do not think 

 that any one has yet completely settled its 

 entire life history, as it seems most eccen- 

 tric in its cycle of existence. A study of 

 this alone would take years of patient work. 

 However, the parasite is now well known 

 and can be easily identified by proper stain- 

 ing, also in the fresh blood. A peculiarity 

 of this parasite is that it seems to like to 

 abide in the internal organs such as the 

 liver, spleen, kidneys, bone marrow and 



