150 Eugene Rollin Corson 



enteric factor is apt at times to be an important element, an 

 element to which the colored are very susceptible, and which 

 is very fatal to them. This has been plainly shown by sta- 

 tistics collected during the war among the colored troops. 



The etiology of our prevalent fevers included under the 

 terms malarial and miasmatic is largely a jumble of mere 

 theories and opinions. There are certain ones which seem to 

 be purely malarial; as we understand the term ; others seem to 

 be larval forms, masked by other elements vaguely called cli- 

 matic ; and others where a distinct enteric or typhoid charac- 

 ter is shown. We call them typho-malarial, a convenient 

 term, but one which prompts to laziness in our efforts to differ- 

 entiate more closely. All these fevers from the simple con- 

 tinued fever up to the severer forms of the malarial remittent, 

 of the bilious and hemorrhagic types, are constantly met 

 with among the colored. My experience has been that the 

 simple continued fevers, without anj' complications, run a 

 protracted course and are hard to break, while the severer 

 malarial remittents and the tj'pho-malarial are very fatal. 

 Granted that the pure negro bears, comparatively speaking, 

 a charmed life in rice fields and uncultivated districts very 

 fatal to the white man, his much greater exposure swells his 

 death list, and this is the important point. Typhoid fever 

 proper is a rare disease with us, comparatively speaking, and 

 when it occurs generally assumes a larval form, masked and 

 modified in one way or another by our climatic influences. 

 To these fevers the negro rapidly succumbs. 



This year we have had more typhoid fever and remittent 

 fevers of various types than has ever been known in Savannah, 

 and a reference to our mortuary tables will show that, taking 

 all forms of fever into consideration, the colored mortalit}^ is 

 greater. 



