423 OK CORAL REEFS AS A CAUSE OF FEVER. 
Of th ese four causes, the third must be excluded from the 
list of exciting, as the peculiar arrangement of the Dutch 
houses merely assists the developement of the malaria, while 
the bad habit of life formerly indulged in by the Dutch (though 
not peculiar to them) predisposes the body to receive the 
exciting cause* which is malaria, and which may be gene¬ 
rated by the other three modes above quoted. Of these three 
I am inclined to think that the second cause, or the state of 
the canals, tilled as they are with decomposed vegetable and 
animal matter in a medium of fresh and brackish water, has 
much more to do in producing the endemic fever of Batavia 
town, than the sea mud flats to the Westward, for the fol¬ 
lowing reasons : 
1st, Similar places in the Straits of Malacca, Borneo, 
Australia and even in the island of Java, as Sourabaya, are 
known to be exempt from fevers, yet in those places there are 
extensive mud flats under tidal influence giving forth, as in 
Batavia, a most intolerable stench of sulphuretted hydrogen, 
2nd. Of late years the endemic fever of Batavia has much 
decreased in virulence and the extent of its ravages ; coinci¬ 
dent with which the canals have been cleared, the mud and 
vegetable filth removed and many of them filled up ; this 
coincidence points out such to have been the cause, and the 
fever the effect, for having effected these hygienic improvements 
the fever abated. 
3rd. Although the endemic by all accounts bas abated in 
its virulence and decreased in its ravages, yet the mud banks 
under tidal influence are still as before “in many parts at low 
water uncovered by the sea, and daily accumulating from the 
quantities of mud and animal matter carried down by the river 
during its reflux.” 
I would have it therefore clearly understood that T attribute 
the endemic remittent fever of Batavia Town to malaria 
arising from those parts of the town wliere animal and vege¬ 
table decomposition is progressing ; but above all, to the 
impure condition oi the canals and river where the tidal in¬ 
fluence is unlelt, and from which malaria must be constantly 
emanating. 
But is the endemic remittent fever of the island and har¬ 
bour of Batavia to be attributed to the same cause as that 
* J une 1849. There are two English vessels in Singapore roads lately 
arrived from Batavia ; both, while there, were anchored near to one another, 
but the one nearer to Batavia pier was a temperance ship where grog 
was not allowed, and regularity was kept; the other was the reverse. 
The first arrived here without a sick man* the second had many laid up 
with fever. 
