On the Aborigines of Brazil. 159 



Measles. 



This too is a very pernicious and widely spread disease 

 among the Indians, (called by the Portuguese Sarampo, 

 and in the Tupi language Mixua-Rana, i. e. false small- 

 pox.) A Brazilian missionary tried to prove to me that 

 this disease also was unknown to the aborigines before 

 the arrival of Europeans, and the accounts which I got 

 from the Indians on the Yupura, seemed to confirm it. But 

 the declarations of Doctor LaCerda and others, made me 

 think it more probable that measles must have prevailed 

 among the Indians before that event. The disease is espe- 

 cially common among children before the warm rainy season, 

 spreads epidemically with great impetuosity, and commonly 

 kills in the first stage with symptoms of violent inflammatory 

 fever ; hooping cough and dropsy are frequent sequelae. 

 Scarlet/ever. 



This or an exanthematous disease very like it, appears 

 also epidemically from time to time on the banks of the 

 Amazon and the Rio Negro. But it is more dangerous to 

 the white and mixed population, than to the red. 



Fevers. 



Now as regards simple fever, it has been already re- 

 marked, that the sluggish, unexcitable constitution of the 

 Indian, and the slight energy of his nervous system do not 

 predispose to such forms of disease as are borne specially by 

 the nervous system, or at least reflected by it. The most 

 marked character observable in this respect, is the want 

 of distinct periodicity in his disease. Intermittent fevers 

 are thus more rare than remittent, and tertians are less fre- 

 quent than quartans. In the exacerbations, stupor and heavi- 

 ness are more common than regular pyrexia. Typhus fever 

 with highly developed affections of the nervous centres is 

 rarer than that which bears the character of synochus. Their 

 fevers are often accompanied with cutaneous eruptions, 

 and frequently with gastric and bilious complications. An 



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