614 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
MOS D IEC JUN IS) NING) Jel SOG rts IN) Jet, 
MALARIA. 
DR. W. B. SAWYER, KANSAS CITY, MO. 
The term Malaria as applied by those outside the profession of medicine to 
disease is vague and often meaningless. It has been in certain localities quite 
the fashion to speak of many ailments of a more or less trifling nature as 
‘¢malaria,” and, with indifference to the appropriate use of terms, to call that a 
disease which is only a name for its cause. The primal and derivative significa- 
tion of the word malaria is ‘‘bad air.” Strictly speaking, however, ail air vitiated 
by any substance poisonous in its action upon the body is bad air. The atmos- 
phere of a closely packed audience room, loaded with carbonic acid, is clearly 
bad, while the stifling gases formed in the combustion of coal render the air of 
many family rooms anything but pure and good. 
Malaria properly and in the signification given it by custom is an air poisoned 
by a definite something called miasm, the effects of which when taken into the 
body are manifested in a class of diseases of which ‘‘ague,” or ‘‘ chills and 
fever,” is the type. Theories are numerous and discussion is endless as to the 
true nature of this miasm, but all theories and all discussions are based upon a 
few facts which the mass of human experience has shown to be incontrovertible. 
Leaving, then, to the medical profession to discuss the theories in detail as they 
are advanced, and to follow out minutely inquiries into the more scientific and 
difficult problems connected with the subject, there is still much to be learned in 
a broad and general way from the simple facts themselves. 
In the first place this poisonous element exists in, and, under favoring condi- 
tions, emanates from the soil. At sea it is unknown or shows its presence only 
when a near approach to land brings it with the wind. Sleeping apartments on. 
the ground floor are more often and more strongly contaminated than those 
above. 
But though in and from the soil, it is only such soil as contains vegetable 
and perhaps mineral decomposing matter, and with the allied conditions of 
warmth and moisture. Marshy lands in warm climates are its most prolific 
sources, and in proportion as either one of the factors, water or heat, is dimin- 
ished, so does its potency and virulence diminish. 
The Pontine marshes and Jersey flats, in which latter locality an admixture 
of salt water seems to aid its generation, have always been covered with malaria, 
and similar tracts of moist country in warm latitudes are of like bad repute. 
Draining or flooding such a tract has an equally good effect in reducing miasm; 
