December 29, 1900.]
+
ming, and then rush up in the tram to the Peak where they meet with another climate, and then suffer from chill or reaction. If only the public would trust more to commonsense and common precaution and pay less attention to silly theories, their health would be greatly benefited.Yours, etc.,
VOX.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “DAILY PRESS."
|
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
523
experiment was no more of a filter to the sur-stumbling block to the acceptance of the malarial rounding night air than is the metal gause of mosquito theory that no one can explain how the coal miner's lamp to the deadly fire-damp, the first feyer germ started. Curiously enough The three men breathed the same air inside a friend asked me the same question, viz., their specially built hut as they would have how did an anopheles mosquito first get a done in an unprotected dwelling erected in the fever germ into him, and I could only answer same locality. They were fended off from mos- in the same way as the local "maniac” and refer quitoes only; hence their resulting freedom him to the origin of all living things. I can from malaria.
not see why this is a difficulty. Let us take one Any one who has intelligently followed the or two parallel cases. Mistletoe is a parasitic Hongkong, 23rd Decembər. experiments that have been and that are plant growing on several kinds of trees. One SIR,-Two of the many sequelae of malaria are still being carried on in connection with the might almost call it a disease of the tree, since pronounced irritability and an unwonted excit deeply engrossing subject of malaria and mos it weakens the tree by absorbing the sap for its ability. It must be pretty plain to the most quitoes, acknowledges that the female anopheles own growth. Birds eat mistletoe borries and casual even of your many readers that "Visitor" is the mere agent of transmission-nothing deposit the seeds about in various places. Some is suffering acutely from both these painful more. As to the ultimate source of the fever seed finds a resting place in a crevice of a after-effects. He has formed his opinion as to germ, that has yet to be discovered. The entire | suitable tree and grows again into a bunch of Because no one can tell me how the causes of the disease; and as, in his pere- theory is at present but in its early infancy. | mistletoe.
first a tree became attacked by mistletoe, or how grinations about our sea-fretted, nook-shotten We are undoubtedly on the threshold of astoun- island home, he sees, on all sides, abundant evid-ding discoveries in this direction. Yellow a bird first came to have a mistletoe berry ence of Dr. Manson's theory being actively fever has recently been traced in Cuba to inside it, this want of knowledge does not in any worked out, he incontinently flies into a towering innoculation by culez fasciatus, a species of way disprove the fact that mistletoe is a passion, and splutteringly confides his woes mosquito particularly tiresome during the parasitic growth on trees, and that it is trans- unto you. May I be allowed to remind him rains in certain regions. The Philadelphia mitted from tree to tree by birds.
Another instance which is perhaps more appo- that sobriety of language does not detract from Medical Journal, at the end of October, con-
sito. the value of any statement, though never so hare-tained an interesting report of practically con- One form of tapo-worm which inhabits brained; whereas violent epithets, as an al-clusive experiments made by the United States the intestines of man gets there by man eating most invariable rule, boomerang-like, return Army Surgeons in Cuba, demonstrating this pig's flesh in which the worm exists in an with most damaging effect? Temperance of fact. Three doctors allowed themselves to be embryonic encysted form. These embryos on expression is as admirable in the ephemeral bitten experimentally; all suffered from the getting into a man develop into a tape-worm, production of a journalistic free lance, as in the disease, and one, a martyr to science if ever there which lays eggs at the rate of several thousand signed article. The opposite quality not in- was one-s mosquito-fiend, or a mosquito-maniac, per day. Some few eggs finally get swallowed frequently leads to exaggeration, and, at times, Visitor," in his uncharitable ignorance, would by a pig, and in the pig develop into the even to self-contradiction. "Visitor's "young dub him-unhappily succumbed.
encysted form which imbeds itself in his muscles men who have lived in the tropics for two or three
to be again eaten by man, and so the cycle of the These are well years immune from malaria, though bitten
life of the tape-worm goes on. by millions of mosquitoes [ipsissima verba]
ascertained facts, but who can say how the pig prove him guilty of the failing first named,
first got the embryonic tape-worm? We can while cursory comparison of the loose-jointed
only say it is part of the scheme of nature, first sentence of the second paragraph of his
which is only another way of confessing letter, with his flippant "word of warning" at
our ignorance. Almost exactly similar is the It is a true living parasite, the end of his remarkable lucubration, clearly
| malarial germ. conviots him of the second and more serious
living in the blood of raan and passed from fault. He unctuonsly prides himself on being
man to man by a certain variety of mosquito, 'practical" man, on his "common sense
but heaven only knows how or when it first. Nor does our want etc., etc, ad nauseam. The scientific man, It was surely in delicate irony or veiled rail-originated in nature. for whom he makes no effort to disguiselery, Mr. Editor, that, in your Thursday's issue, of knowledge in this respect in any way his vitriolic contempt, is nothing if not you styled "Visitor's " crowded-out communica- disprove the malaria mosquito theory. practical, and is, moreover, eminently gifted tion interesting ? with a good fund of common sense. The main difference between the man in the street" and the man of science is that the former applies his commonsense in a haphazard, off-hand style, while the latter does so in an orderly manner. Science, in its broadest meaning, is but the methodical and organised use of every-are specially trained for the work. day commonplace knowledge.
44
$4
Visitor" should speak for himself, and not drag "all other practical men," lief or loath, into the same net of entanglement that he himself is, vide the last three lines of his first precious paragraph. Personally, I strongly object to support him; and I imagine that others will also range themselves against him.
risks.
44
All kinds of theories to account for malaria have, at various times and in different localities, been propounded; and by turns practically every condition prevailing in mal- arial districts has been blamed. A given theory is, of course, acceptable as long as it satisfies observed phenomena. As soon as it fails to do so it is rejected. It is highly probable that miasms has no more to do with any of the three forms of malaria than epicycles have with planetary motions.
I might go through his extraordinary letter and traverse his statements in detail. I think, however, I have written enough to prove that he is not yet able to lead or guide us in the mat- ter. He had far better stand humbly aside, and leave the task in the hands of those who
Apologising for my length, and enclosing my card, I am, dear sir, yours, etc.,
44
RESIDENT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRESS." Hongkong, 24th December. SIR, It is very amusing to find a man who does not appear to understand the principle of the Humphrey Davy lamp setting himself up as an authority on such a difficult and complex subject as the cansation of malaria.
זי
44
Visitor" tells us he is a practical but not a medical man. Many such are experts with the microscope. Has "Visitor" examined the mula- rial parasite in the blood of a fever patient? Has he seen the parasite in its various stages of de- velopment in the mosquito till it finally gets into the mosquito's salivary gland ready for injection into a human being? I think he cannot have seen them, else had he been a con- vert. And if he has not seen them, what right has he, may I ask, to palm off his old time views on an enlightened colony? Let him go and study the subject microscopically and otherwise, and after that perhaps he may be more fitted to teach the public through the columns of a daily paper. One thing is certain, and that is that malaria is a parasitic disease, that the parasite is a living organism which has its habitat in man's blood corpuscles; it is taken up by mosquitoes with the blood, and in one species (anopheles) finds a suitable host in which to grow. In that mosquito it undergoes certain changes, increasing and multiplying and finally gets injected with the salivary secretion into whatever the mosquito bites. If it be a man, that man will probably get an attack of fever: not certainly, however, because the man may be sufficiently resistant, so that if he only gets a small dose of malarial germs his blood, may succeed in preventing the malarial organism Of course this proves nothing from growing. against a possibility of some other way of entry, except that we find that nature is almost always is the case. Fire-damp passes freely through | uniform in ber methods designed for the pro- the gauze of the lamp and actually burns inside, | pagation of species. However, whether malaria can be got in some other way or not, we know but the metallic gauze conducts the heat away so quickly that the flame will not pass through for certain that it can be disseminated by the gauze and ignite the gases on the outside. anopheles mosquitoes. Surely then it is our Anyone may prove this for himself by holding | duty to try and diminish malarial fever by get- a piece of wire gauze over a turned-on gas. | ting rid of mosquitoes, even if we cannot hope
to get rid of it altogether.
His letter contains several inaccuracies of fact. He says two men took part in the Ostia experiment. There were three: Drs Sambon and G. S. Low, of the London School of Tropical Medicine, in addition to Signor Your correspondent “Visitor says in his Terzi. He says the experiment was not letter in your issue of Saturday that he thinks long enough. Indeed, Sir Oracle! Why, that Drs. Sambon and Low, who spent last the place chosen has so evil a reputation, summer in the most unhealthy part of the that the inhabitants of Rome-which is quite Campagna, owed their immunity from fever near, while Hongkong is very far-consider in part to the fact that their mosquito nets that to sleep there is alone sufficient to con- prevented the miasma from reaching them tract severe fever. Not a few thought the (on the principle of the Humphrey Davy Visitor" means that the three men above named incurred the gravest Lamp). I suppose
wire gauze of the Humphrey Davy lamp pre- Again, "Visitor's" reference to the Hum-vents the inflammable gases of which fire damp phry Davy lamp, far from being the palpable is composed from reaching the flame. Unfortu- hit intended, is an apt illustration of that cook-nately for "Visitor's" argument, the reverse sure, free-and-easy manner with which your ordinary practical individual blazons abroad his poor smattering of scientific informatiou. As any coal-miner of experience can tell him, the safety of the lamp in question depends, not on the fallacious supposition that the wire-gauzɔ acts as a filter shutting out the highly explosive mix- ture of light carburetted hydrogen and atmos.burner and lighting the gas above it. pheric air, but on the fact of its cooling proper ties. The dangerous mixture of gases, as is well known, actually enters the lamp and burns inside, but—and this is where he has gone astray-the wire ganse so far cools the escaping products of combustion that they cannot heat to igniting point the mixture which is outside and in im- mediate contact with the miner's lamp. The mosquito-proof hat used in the Campagna
If "Visitor" is still sceptical about gases passing through mosquito nets, let him, protected by a mosquito net, sleep in a room with the gas I for one should be well burners turned on. assured that by next morning Hongkong would who was doing be rid for ever of a "Visitor his little best to hold back the progress of science and retard the advance of truth. Again "Visitor" appears to find it a great
#
MEDICO.
THE TRAMWAY COMPANY.
TO THE EDITOE OF THE “DAILY PRESS,"
Hongkong, 20th December. Bix,The legitimate complaint of your cor- respondent "Peakite" in this morning's issue
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.