1 6 THE HISTORY OF TROPICAL MEDICINE 



Early Tropical Medicine. — ^The work of the last section being 

 carried out in ships with more or less numerous crews, it was 

 customary for these vessels to be provided with a surgeon, or, at all 

 events, with a person with some knowledge of medicine and some 

 powers of observation. Later, when intelligent people settled in 

 tropical regions they made records of their experiences, and in this 

 way a curious literature sprang up, partly geographical, partly 

 zoological, partly botanical, partly medical, and partly ethnographi- 

 cal. It is in this literature that we find some of the earliest references 

 to disease in the tropics. The literature itself is sufficiently indi- 

 cated in the list of works given at the end of this chapter ; but being 

 so mixed in its nature, it produced but little effect, and was left 

 almost unnoticed until after the rise of modern tropical medicine. 



Foundations of Modern Tropical Medicine. 



The discoveries of new lands made as indicated above by voyages, 

 were in due course extended by land exploration, and later by 

 settlements founded by Europeans and their families, and as these 

 grew in number and in size, so the number of medical practitioners 

 also increased. 



These medical men studied the diseases of the European settlers 

 and of the natives of the regions in which they resided, and recorded 

 their results in numerous publications, as is indicated in the list of 

 works given at the end of this chapter. 



These works naturally reflected the teaching which the author 

 had received in Europe prior to his tropical career, and, therefore, 

 as knowledge in Europe progressed, so information with regard to 

 tropical diseases was amplified. 



The factor which was most potent in the foundation of modem 

 tropical medicine was the steady evolution and perfection of the 

 compound microscope. It was this instrument which enabled 

 Laveran to discover the malarial parasite, and Manson to find the 

 periodicity of the Microfilaria nocturna. 



These investigators may well be called the pioneer founders of 

 modern tropical medicine, and that foundation was secured by the 

 world-wide interest in tropical disease aroused by Ross's discovery 

 of the spread of malaria by the mosquito. From the date of these 

 discoveries modern tropical medicine, in our opinion, begins, because 

 they opened up the possibility of finding the cause, the treatment, 

 the method of spread, and the prevention of a tropical disease, and, 

 moreover, for some reason or another, subsequent work on these 

 lines has apparently been much more successful in the tropics than 

 elsewhere. 



Thus modern tropical medicine was essentially based upon the 

 microscopical diagnosis of the disease, and differed thereby from 

 earlier tropical medicine, which was entirely clinical; yet, in our 

 opinion, clinical and microscopical diagnosis should go hand in 

 hand, and the practitioner should never so depart from the essential 

 of all medical knowledge, the thorough bedside examination of the 



