Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s notes:

The text of this e-book has been preserved in its original form apart from correction of a few typographic errors (omposition → composition, recal → recall, gives → give, bloodvessels → blood vessels), and insertion of some missing quotation marks. Inconsistent hyphenation and inconsistent spelling (Scheld/Scheldt/Sheldt) has not been altered. Footnotes have been numbered and positioned below the relevant paragraphs.

AN ENQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN AND INTIMATE NATURE

OF

MALARIA.

By THOMAS WILSON,
CHEVALIER DE L’ORDRE DU LION NEERLANDAIS.

LONDON:
HENRY RENSHAW, 356, STRAND.
1858.

LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

TO

M. ROCHUSSEN,

MINISTER OF COLONIES AT THE HAGUE.

SIR,--

I have taken the liberty of dedicating this little work to you. It treats of a subject on which I have made many experiments and collected many observations in Belgium and in Holland. I have carefully weighed the conflicting evidence of some distinguished observers, and the conclusion arrived at is, that this conflict has arisen partly from a want of due care in making the observations, partly from the extreme difficulty accompanying all inquiries in which physiology and pathology, health and disease, are necessarily involved.

In the course of my memoir I have endeavoured to do justice to Holland, esteeming it to be the most remarkable country in the world. I cannot find in the history of any other nation proofs so clear of the beneficial effects of indomitable industry, directed by intelligence, over the welfare and destinies of a people; nowhere do I find evidence so convincing of the great results flowing from the application of practical science to the wants of a people; nowhere do I find to the same extent a sound commercial and political economy, first developed and acted on in Holland, lead so directly to the civilization and welfare of a nation. Those great principles which other nations and other races discussed theoretically and elaborated into systems, the nation of which you are a distinguished citizen, discovered, adopted, applied, and enforced. To Holland, as a nation, belongs eminently the character of practical. Whilst other nations left uncultivated as they found them, or rendered unproductive, the most fertile territories, seemingly unable to turn them to account, the country and people to which you belong compelled the ocean to retire from a barren, unprofitable, and untillable soil, which they converted into a garden; and if ever the great problem of rendering the whole earth habitable for man be solved, I may venture to predict--with all due respect for other nations and other races--that the solution must come from Holland. As it would be presumptuous in me--a humble individual--directly to address a nation, I have ventured to do so indirectly through you. Permit me, therefore, to dedicate this little work to you, as the expression of my personal regard and friendship, and of my deep respect for the nation to which you belong.

I am, SIR,

Most respectfully yours,

THE AUTHOR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

Epidemics--Their mysterious character--Distinction between endemics
and epidemics--Malaria, where chiefly met with--Is it of one kind
or several?--Author’s long residence in a _malaria_-producing
country pp. 1–3

CHAPTER I.

The question as to there being several kinds of malaria, further
examined--Theory of Macculloch, tracing to a malaria, chiefly
generated by man himself, all forms of disease, from the plague to
a common neuralgia--This theory now accepted, and to a certain
extent acted on by the British Government--Experiments of the
Board of Health--Results to be seen at Luton, Birmingham, and
London pp. 4, 5

CHAPTER II.

The history of epidemics adverse to the theory of Macculloch--Results
of confounding drains with sewers, and of converting drains into
drain-sewers--Influence of the external world (earth, air, and water)
over man, first examined by Hippocrates in his celebrated treatise,
“_De aere, aquis et locis_,”[1] but with other views--Influence of
modern chemistry over physiology--Men now expect from chemistry a
solution of some of the great problems of physiology and pathology
still unsolved pp. 6–14

[1] Περι αερον, ὑδατων καὶ τοπων. Cary’s edition. Paris. 1806.

CHAPTER III.

The great plague in the time of Justinian--View as to its African
origin, and strictly contagious nature, adopted by Gibbon--Admits,
however, the necessity for an insalubrious condition of the atmosphere,
in addition to the presence of the poison--Its reappearance at present
in Northern Africa (Bengazzi)--Modern theories as to its origin and
mode of propagation, refuted by the histories of plague, cholera, and
typhus--Murrains pp. 15–25

CHAPTER IV.

View of nature acted on by the Hollander and Brabanter--Their struggle
to overcome the difficulties of their position--Rise of the Dutch
Republic, and of the School of Mechanical and Practical Science of
Holland--Its influence over Europe and the world--Drainage of the Lake
of Haarlem--Practical instances of the truth of the principle, that
“when man interferes with nature, he must carry through the work to an
issue”--How to convert a peat-bog into a healthy meadow, a dreary waste
into a profitable, cheerful farm pp. 26–30

CHAPTER V.

Sources of malaria--Various medical hypotheses refuted by Colonel
Tulloch--Intermittents and remittents as they appear on the Western
Coast of Africa and in Canada pp. 31–43

CHAPTER VI.

Extent of life on the globe as proved by the microscope--Theory of
Cuvier as to the nutrition of plants and animals--Vast extent of
the microscopic living world--The “blooming of plants”--Results of
disturbing the muddy banks of rivers--Sources of the bad odours of
certain marshes and rivers--Remarkable influence of a change in
temperature over the products of fermentation--Parasite theory of
putrefaction, fermentation, and disease, refuted by Liebig, pp. 44–54

CHAPTER VII.

Decomposition and metamorphosis of animal beings--Influence they
exercise over the soil as a habitation for man--Disposal of the
excreta and remains of animals and vegetables--Danger of these when
accumulated--Immunity of savage tribes--Scurvy amongst the white
troops at the Cape of Good Hope, the healthiest climate in the
world--Metamorphoses of organic remains--Influence of oxygen, of
nitrogen, and ammonia--Source of the inorganic principles--Fluate of
lime in fossil bones--Danger to man of putrescent sea-water--Man’s
incessant struggle with nature--Fatality of the climate of Rio
pp. 55–65

CHAPTER VIII.

Earth, air, and water, in relation to man--How modified by
him--Results of that modification--Action and reaction--Antagonism
of man to nature--Effects of human labour on the soil--How man
protects his dwelling--Distinction between a drain and a sewer, a
distinction first practically denied in England--Chemical elements
of animal bodies--Nourishment of plants--Exhaustion of the soil in
Virginia--Value of farm-yard manure--Agriculture in China--Effects of
clearing the primæval forests of America--Causes of the hay-fever,
typhus and typhoid fevers--Effects of bad ventilation--Importance
of the infusoria in nature’s great scheme--Origin and action
of _humus_--Functions of the _humus_ and of the leaves--Means
adopted in Holland for the conversion of a bog or morass into a
polder--Antediluvian vegetation--Elements which require being restored
to the soil--Belgian agriculturists--Statistics of Quetelet pp. 66–88

CHAPTER IX.

On poisons, miasms, and contagions--Difficulties besetting the
questions as to their essential nature and origin--Poison of typhus,
of yellow fever, and of the remittent fevers of hot countries--Their
appearance at uncertain and distant periods in an aggravated
form--Statistics of the recurrence of remittents in the West
Indies--Light thrown by chemistry on the subject--Fermentation and
putrefaction--Peculiar poisons--Distinction between a miasm and a
contagion--Odour perceptible in sick chambers--Ozone, pp. 89–98