Jungle fever

“ If the conversation happens to turn on jungle fever, or any subject like that, down goes her thumb instantly, and she clasps her fist over it with a convulsive squeeze. At the same time, too, her face twitches. I know what that trick means. She's horribly afraid of tropical diseases, though she never says so. ”

“ It is not, however, at all times and seasons that travellers journeying through these low passes, of which there are several, to the Valley of the Dhoon, can rejoice in the climate; for at some periods of the year, few can encounter the malaria, which comes laden with jungle fever, with impunity. ”

“ The felling and clearing of the jungle, which cultivation would render necessary, would tend, in a great measure, to dispel the fevers and malaria always produced by a want of free circulation of air. In a jungle-covered country like Ceylon, diseases of the most malignant character are harbored in these dense and undisturbed tracts, which year after year reap a pestilential harvest from the thinly-scattered population. Cholera, dysentery, fever and small-pox all appear in their turn and annually sweep whole villages away. ”

“ Speculators, adventurers, card sharpers, hell keepers, and doubtful ladies have carried their charms to this delightful market. The scene of operations is a damp tropical jungle, intensely hot, swarming with mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, scorpions, and centipedes; the home, even as nature made it, of yellow fever, typhus, and dysentery, and now made immeasurably more deadly by the multitudes of people who crowd thither. ”

“ This is succeeded at the end of an hour or more by a feeling of burning heat; perspiration ceases, the sufferer's temperature rises to over a hundred; he is a victim of terrible pains in the head, and is often delirious. At Cho-Trang this condition was usually complicated by hematuric symptoms, which, fortunately, do not occur in the majority of cases of ordinary jungle fever. ”

“ In the almost unexplored region of the Rio Madeira 170 the fever is certain to every traveller, though the land is largely without inhabitants; and it is almost equally certain that it will be of the malignant type. Yet at an old settlement like Serpa, where probably every inhabitant has had malaria, and every mosquito is likely to be a host, the fever is but mild, and the traveller may escape it entirely.
By now you will be asking what Itacoatiara is like, that community contentedly lost in the secret forest. ”

“ The fever is very deadly to Europeans, nor do the natives themselves escape. The coolies who work in the tea-fields die of it in large numbers.
At one time the natives used to fire the jungle regularly. This great sweep of flame through the region did much towards purifying the air; but firing the jungle is now forbidden, for fear of harming the tea-bushes and the houses of the planters.
The sight of a tea-plantation is curious rather than pretty. The bushes have no beauty: they stand in long, neat rows, and each bush is trimmed to keep it low, broad, and flat. ”

“ It was dense jungle; undergrowth, creepers and vines bound the trees together. The lack of sunlight and the dense atmosphere made progress slow. Sometimes the task of driving elephants on foot through such country seemed hopeless, but I kept the men at work, hacking out trails with parangs—their big knives. The insects were frightful, and we were all covered with bites. I developed fever and went about so "groggy" that I was not at all sure of myself; but huge doses of quinine and the excitement of tracking so large a herd kept me going. ”

“ At this time it was a miserable, swampy spot, where fever, guinea-worm, and all kinds of horrible diseases were rampant; but this state of affairs has now been completely altered by drainage and by clearing away the jungle. ”

“ The land being everywhere lowlying and malarious, fever was prevalent while the loneliness of the life, and the fear of wild animals which constantly carried off the ryots as they cut down the jungle, induced them to escape at the earliest possible moment. ”

“ Our nearness to land stirs up some old dreads in our minds also. We discuss those dreads again, though with more concern than we did at Swansea. Over the bows is now the prelude. We have heard many unsettling legends of yellow fever, malaria, blackwater fever, dysentery, and beri-beri. The mates, looking for land, swear they were fools to come a voyage like this. They ought to have known better. The Doctor, who does not always smile when he is amused, advises us not to buy a white sun umbrella at Para, but a black one ”

“ The floor was full of drafts, and if he caught cold he would die. At night he was tied down, lest he should kick the covers off him, while the family lay in their stupor of exhaustion. He would lie and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment. He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a great purple lump of misery. ”

“ In the denser jungles malaria prevails for months after the cessation of the rains, but the Gonds do not appear to suffer much from its effects. Travellers and strangers who venture into these jungles run the risk of fever of a severe type at almost all seasons of the year. ”

“ As a rule, elevated places enjoy a relative immunity; if the disease is introduced into such localities, it does not spread. To this, again, there are exceptions, for the Syrian epidemic referred to prevailed in certain spots 4,000 to 5,000 ft. above the sea. In the Mediterranean basin dengue is a disease of autumn months and generally follows the summer outbreak of phlebotomus fever. ”

“ Similar stories, illustrative of the sudden incidence of the symptoms, circulate during every epidemic of dengue. Sometimes the fever is ushered in by a feeling of chilliness or even by a smart rigor; sometimes a deep flushing of the face is the first sign of the disease.
However introduced, fever rapidly increases. The head and eyeballs ache excessively, and some limb or joint, or even the whole body, is racked with peculiar stiff, rheumatic-like pains, which, as the patient soon discovers, are very much aggravated by movement. ”

“ An attack produces quite an immunity.
The disease has chiefly been studied in the Balkan States but undoubtedly it is widespread.
The disease is almost never fatal so that we know nothing of its pathology.
Symptomatology.—The symptoms will answer perfectly for cases of dengue one sees in a dengue epidemic in which, instead of the saddle-back course of fever, we have a three-day primary rise and then a fall to normal without any secondary fever rise. Cases of phlebotomus fever are occasionally reported where the fever continues seven or eight days. ”

“ He is now seen to be a purveyor of disease—we might say the purveyor of disease.
The cat and the dog, the rat and the mouse and their small parasites are responsible for some diseases. The deadly Anopheles only brings malaria, even the Stegonyia has but one fever in his gift, albeit a yellow one; but Musca Domestica deposits on our food, on our clothing, on our pillows, on our very faces, according to the N. Y. Medical Journal, the germs of "tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, summer diarrhea of children, plague, carbuncle, yaws, tapeworm, swine-plague and typhoid fever." ”

“ Thus the circulation of air is impeded and disease again halves the population. In each successive year the wretched inhabitants are thinned out, and disease becomes the more certain as the jungle continues to advance. At length the miserable few are no longer sufficient to cultivate the rice-lands; their numbers will not even suffice for driving their buffaloes. The jungle closes round the village; cholera finishes the scene by sweeping off the remnant; and groves of cocoa-nut trees, towering over the thorny jungle, become monuments sacred to the memory of an exterminated village. ”

“ All these modes of removing the causes of malignant and yellow fevers, and of promoting strict and universal cleanliness, are of more consequence in the middle and northern states of America, than in countries uniformly warm, inasmuch as the disease may be taken as often as our inhabitants are exposed to its sources. In the West-Indies, a second attack of the yellow fever is prevented by the insensibility induced upon the system, by its being constantly exposed to the impressions of heat and exhalation. ”

“ Guayaquil, Ecuador, on the west coast of South America, three days’ sail from Panama, was badly infected. On the west coast to the north, Corinto in Nicaragua and other ports, we knew to be infected. On the Caribbean Sea, within from one to three days’ sail, Cartagena, Colombia, Porto Caballo, La Guira, Venezuela, the port of Caracas, and other ports were having yellow fever. On the Gulf of Mexico, Vera Cruz, Mexico, was an endemic center. Progreso, the capital of Yucatan, was also having this disease. In 1905, New Orleans, Louisiana, had a sharp epidemic of yellow fever. ”

“ This excessive moisture and the decomposition of dead vegetable matter is the cause of the intermittent fevers that prevail in all parts of the peninsula, where the yellow fever, under a mild form generally, is also endemic. When it appears, as this year, in an epidemic form, the natives themselves enjoy no immunity from its ravages, and fall victims to it as well as unacclimated foreigners. ”

“ During his wait in Manila Richardson was afflicted with the common tropical malady of dengue and was confined to his bed for ten days. Dengue is a sort of tropical grippe which is conveyed by mosquitoes and attacks its victims by means of a fever, rash and sore bones in every part of the body. Probably its most aggravating features are its after-effects, for a severe case often leaves the patient in such shape that it requires several months to recover normal health. ”

“ Now, dengue has this short-coming: that people do not die of it. Disobliging sufferers from the alleged "dengue" began to fill up the cemeteries, thereby embarrassing the local authorities, until one of the health officers had a brilliant idea. "When they die," he said, "we'll call it malarial fever." And as such it went upon the records. Two recalcitrant members of the Galveston Health Board reported certain extremely definite cases as yellow fever. ”

“ It would appear that house flies, stable flies and horseflies may transmit the disease in nature and we know that bedbugs and lice can transmit the disease among experimental animals. When we consider the natural infection of ground squirrels and jack rabbits in California and Utah and wild rabbits in the middle west, the problem of prophylaxis looms to great proportion.
Treatment.—At present treatment is entirely symptomatic. Those who go to bed at once and remain in bed during the stage of fever seem to be less seriously affected. ”

“ Immunity acquired by prolonged residence or by a previous attack.— A well-established fact about yellow fever is that the natives of, and those who have lived for a long time in, the endemic area are practically immune from the disease; or, if they are attacked, the disease is usually of a very mild type. It is also said that if the native quits the endemic area his immunity decreases in proportion to the length of time he remains away; so that, after long absence, on his return to the endemic area he may be attacked just as an ordinary visitor might be. ”

“ Thus, as in the case of malaria, there are many places where the insect carrier is abundant but where yellow fever does not occur. Such, for instance, are Hawaii, Australia and Asia. An outbreak may occur at any time that a patient suffering from the disease is allowed to enter and become a source of infection for the mosquitoes. ”

“ Pneumonia and typhoid in the temperate climates cause greater ravages than tropical diseases in their field, nor is malaria in its manifold manifestations limited to a given area. Fever and ague in the United States, calentura in the West Indies, terciana in the forest regions of the Andes,—it all is essentially the breakbone fever. ”

“ For every act of depravity or inhumanity there were, doubtless, deeds of devotion and unselfishness, but the overall effect of an epidemic attack of yellow fever — and any outbreak might develop into epidemic proportions— was the utter demoralization of community life. The direat that hung over the cities and villages of the United States was ample warrant for the creation of a special commission to visit the West Indies and study yellow jack in its home haunts. ”

“ The climate is very unhealthy, the tropical scrub being a harbinger of malignant fevers, malaria, etc.; and it will take years of cultivation before it alters for the better. The natives even are subject to attacks, but in a milder form. Where there is little scrub and no swamp, fever is not quite so prevalent. ”

“ In tropical work we combine the large mononuclears and transitionals in a differential count. They are the phagocytes of animal cells or parasites. The disease in which their increase is best recognized is malaria and an increase to 15% where the blood shows moderate leucopenia is very significant. The melaniferous leucocytes of malaria are cells of this type.
Other protozoal infections, as kala-azar, trypanosomiasis and amoebiasis cause it. Filterable-virus diseases may show a mononuclear increase, thus yellow fever and dengue both give an increase about the fifth or sixth day. ”

“ From uncooked fruits and vegetables we get dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera, and parasitic diseases. Spoiled beans give us the deadly lathyrismus. From decomposed meat and fish we get ptomaine poisoning. Mosquitoes convey to us malaria, yellow fever and a parasite known as the filaria. The dreaded sleeping-sickness of Africa comes through the bites of a small fly; the bedbug is believed to be the means of conveying a frightful disease known as kala-azar, and the house-fly often brings to us the germs that produce typhoid fever, dysentery, and probably other diseases as well. ”