OF THE ISLANDS NEAR SINGAPORE. 
583 
this he said was of an old date, and this house was surrounded by 
pineapples. From the island of Bl&kang Mat! we proceeded to a 
neighbouring one called Palo Sikejang, ascended the hill through 
pineapples, found one house with one inhabitant; he had no fever 
and never had any. After walking { of a mile through pineapples, 
we made a precipitous descent, and reached the bottom of a rich 
and narrow valley, in which near the sea were 2 houses and 5 inha¬ 
bitants ; all were w 7 ell at present, but one had about a year ago an at¬ 
tack of intermittent fever, but no remittent cases had ever appeared 
among them. The next island is situated about 12 miles from Sin¬ 
gapore town and about 1^ miles from the western extremity of the 
island of Singapore. It is called Pulo Pisee, there is one abode in¬ 
habited by six Chinaman, wdio are charcoal burners, all appeared 
healthy and they declared they never had fever, though the island 
is covered in every direction, even to the water’s edge, with pine¬ 
apples. 
Near to this island is one called Sikra not much inferior in size 
to Blak&ng Matf, and covered entirely with pine-apples. Surround¬ 
ing the island is a belt of mangroves, but no other tree is to be found 
on the island, saving a few fruit trees. These are scattered in va¬ 
rious parts of the island, near to 6 houses inhabited by Bugis, who 
are from 30 to 40 in number. I made there a most minute exami¬ 
nation, and the result was that not one had contracted fever while 
on the island, and some had lived there for 20 years, others former¬ 
ly lived in Blakang Mad, and while these contracted fever but lost 
it after a short residence on this island. 1 might multiply such 
proofs of the innocuous nature of pine-apple plantations, until the 
subject became tiresome, but enough of evidence has I think been 
produced to shew that the fever on the island of Blakang Mad, can¬ 
not be said to arise from the decomposition of the pine-apple: and 
now we have exhausted the supposed causes, and shewed that none 
of them can account for the fever, nor for any fever. ; in short I may 
say that we have brought forward all the causes that land can pro¬ 
duce, and in my humble opinion, have proved that not one of the 
causes is competent to account for the appaling mortality which re¬ 
sults from the endemic fever of that spot of the island of Blakang 
Mad called Ayer Bandera. It now remains for me to explain my 
theory, which is the subject of this essay, and which, to the best of 
my belief, is original. At least I am ignorant that it has ever been 
broached. I have examined all the medical works and periodicals 
