Virago

“ These viragoes have no scruples as to what they are to eat and drink; many of them, indeed, can manage a bottle as well as any man in the kingdom: they are, however, staunch Catholics, and, on calendar days, dress out in all the finery their kind keepers can be coaxed out of. ”

“ The Vulgate Latin renders the Hebrew virago, which is a feminine form of vir, a man. Symmachus uses ανδρις, andris, a female form of ανηρ, aner, a man. Our own term is equally proper when understood. Woman has been defined by many as compounded of wo and man, as if called man's wo because she tempted him to eat the forbidden fruit; but this is no meaning of the original word, nor could it be intended, as the transgression was not then committed. ”

“ Possibly there are circumstances in the life of a redeyed vireo which, if known, would account for his irritability and egotistical belief that all eyes are upon him with evil intent; but our eyes are dull, and one could wish at times that his trials, whatever they may be, might sweeten his temper. I do know, at least, that redeyed vireos are much tormented by that plague of bird life, the cowbunting, which delights in laying her eggs in the redeye’s nest ”

“ One by one the vireo fledglings die and are carried from the nest by the mourning parents, and so the survivor [Pg 262] flourishes and grows fat, rocked in the cradle by the gentle breezes and under the care and protection of the little red-eyed vireos. The vireos are noted as good providers and protectors. During incubation they are fearless and loath to leave their eggs,—at times indeed, will permit you to approach the nest within two feet and photograph. ”

“ Smallpox appears to be endemic, rather than epidemic, in Vera Cruz, while tuberculosis, strange to say, collects a greater toll of death than all the more serious diseases added together. Here, in the tierras calientes, or hot lands, where it is so continuously warm that in a room flung wide to the outer air and every vagrant breeze even a sheet over one at night is suffocating, the natives crowd into small, unventilated rooms, weaken their lungs, and fall victims to the White Plague. ”

“ Hygienic measures, good food, tonics, and antiseptic and stimulating applications are curative.
Verruga Peruana. (Synonyms: Peruvian Warts; Carrion's Disease; Oroya Fever.)
Describe verruga peruana.
A specific inoculable affection endemic in some valleys of the Western Andes, in Peru, and characterized by a prodromal febrile period and subsequent outbreak of peculiar pin-head- to pea-sized, or larger, bright reddish, rounded, wart-like elevations. ”

“ Virchow himself has said on this subject, in answer to an attack by his former pupil Klebs: "Vegetable and animal parasites are among the causes of disease. Their place is in etiology, and therefore it is easily conceived that, as Klebs expresses himself, they found no place in my cellular pathology. There it was not any more my domain to offer an extensive paper on parasites than it was to treat of traumatic injuries and corrosions. In my cellular pathology I meant to demonstrate the changes which take place in the elements of the organism in the general forms of disease. ”

“ Virchow found them in three bodies at autopsy, all of them being run down individuals, two of them old subjects, and all sufferers from chronic bronchitis. Usually, when the parasites were found, there was a distinct tendency to very low resistive vitality in the tissues, sometimes proceeding even to the extent of beginning pulmonary gangrene. In reviewing the subject Virchow [Footnote 7] said that the light thrown {240} upon it by the investigations of Müller and Retzius was of the greatest possible assistance in enabling him to identify the parasite when he found it in human subjects. ”

“ Yet to the end of his own career Virchow stoutly maintained that in all its essential significance his own fundamental principle remained quite untouched by the newer discoveries. And, as a fact, this view could indeed be maintained. For if diseases proved to be the consequences of the presence of parasites, the diseases themselves, so far as they belonged to the diseased organism, were still not the parasites, but were, as before, the reaction of the organism to the veränderte Bedingungen which the presence of the parasites entailed. So Virchow could well insist. ”

“ No clever medical man has yet practised at Veracruz. An American doctor, who was very successful there in the early part of 1826, was carried off by the disease himself at the end of the season; and no good account has been given, either by him, or any one else, of the change which the late influx of foreigners has produced in the proportion of the number of deaths to that of the persons attacked by the fever, which Humboldt states, in the best of the Veracruz hospitals, (in 1804,) not to have exceeded sixteen in the hundred. ”

“ Oroya Fever.—It was formerly supposed that this fever was the first stage of verruga, but it is now considered as a distinct disease entity, caused by a protozoon of bacillary form which invades the red cells. With pains of various joints and bones we have a gradual rise of temperature which after a few days reaches 103° to 104°F. and tends to become remittent or continuous.
[503]
There is a remarkable and excessive destruction of the red cells which may fall to a million or less per c.mm. ”

“ There are no vireos in Europe, nor birds that answer to them. With us, they contribute an important element to the music of our groves and woods. There are few birds I should miss more than the red-eyed vireo, with his cheerful musical soliloquy, all day and all summer, in the maples and locusts. It is he, or rather she, that builds the exquisite basket nest on the ends of the low, leafy branches, suspending it between two twigs. The warbling vireo has a stronger, louder strain, more continuous, but not quite so sweet. ”

“ A fever, which persists for up to 5 days, essentially coincides with the development of a cell-free viremia and vesicular lesions. The peak viremia occurs 2-4 days postexposure and persists for about 7 days. The virus persists for at least 7 days in the tissues of the snout, tongue, coronary band, tonsil, cardiac muscle, and central nervous system. The stratum spinosum is the primary site of viral replication in the epithelium. A nonsuppurative meningoencephalitis most frequently occurs in the cerebrum, thalamus, brain stem, and olfactory lobes. ”

“ An autopsy confirmed the diagnosis. Here was a man suffering from a case of yellow fever, of which he finally died on the sixth day, who, for the first five days of the disease, was about town, going from saloon to saloon, drinking immoderately, eating what [Pg 267] came to hand, and sleeping where convenient. Twenty-four hours before he died, he rode up to the hospital in a cab and walked into the ward. He was having black vomit before he left the jail.
It is often extremely difficult to trace a case of yellow fever and discover the source of infection. ”

“ In the Quebrada of Canta, where the verugas are less common than in that of Matucanas, another disease, called the Uta, is of very frequent occurrence. The uta is a sort of cancer, and it is more fearful in its consequences than the verugas. [Pg 186] Probably in no country in the world do so many local diseases prevail as in Peru. Every valley has its own peculiar disease, which frequently does not extend beyond the boundary of a few square miles, and is quite unknown in neighboring districts. ”

“ Virchow, on the other hand, has declared that it is not highly contagious. There is evidence to show that persons far advanced in the disease may live in a healthy community and yet not infect their immediate neighbours. ”

“ An antagonism to Virchow has apparently been assumed by some of the partisans of the bacterial theory of infectious diseases which has no real basis for existence. No discrepancy need exist between a theory which regards disease as a disorder of the cells and the one which finds in the bacteria an external agency provoking and promoting cell-disorder. ”

“ PROGNOSIS.—The prognosis of variola is wellnigh inseparably associated with the question of protection by vaccination. Variola vera in the unprotected is an exceedingly fatal malady, the death-rate varying in different epidemics according to the severity of each and the ages and hygienic surroundings of the victims of the disease. Certainly, from 15 to 50 per cent. of unprotected individuals affected with the disease occurring in epidemic form in any given community will perish. ”

“ They all live in trees and catch insects, going about over the twigs. They sing as they go, like the warblers, combining work and play. Some of them sing almost without stopping, and it gets to be rather tiresome after a while. One or two of them even sing on the nest, which hardly another bird does.
The vireos make the prettiest nests. They are swinging baskets, hung between the forks of a twig, and usually near the end, where they rock in every breeze. They are not often very high. The birds are easily tamed by one who is quiet, and careful not to frighten them. ”

“ They attack silently and inflict a very painful, stinging bite, followed by itching. The ankles, dorsum of the feet, wrists, inner elbow, knee joint and similar places are favorite places of attack, possibly on account of their more delicate skin.
Special interest has been attracted to these little pests in recent years, since it has been shown that they transmit the European "pappatici fever" or "three day fever." More recently yet, it appears that they are the carriers of the virus of the Peruvian "verruga." ”

“ His claims are to have proved, first of all, that the disease was particularly associated with the nervous system. The virus is usually spread through the saliva, but it is not found in the blood or lymph, and it has its special seat in the nerves, brain, and spinal cord. Secondly, he showed that the virus might be attenuated in its virulence. The spinal cord of a rabbit which has died of rabies, is, when fresh, powerfully virulent, but when exposed for a couple of weeks to dry air at a constant temperature of 23°-24°C. it loses its virulence. ”

“ The birds were in sparse brush (Garrya, Kunzia, Artemisia tridentata, and Cercocarpus betulaefolius) ; and a digger pine and a pinyon both grew within one hundred feet of where they were discovered.
I was first attracted by the broken, post-nuptially rendered song of the male—intermittent and sketchy, yet distinct enough from the songs of other vireos to be recognized at once. This male Gray Vireo was promptly shot. It proved to be in molt, with only two of the old tall-feathers remaining and with new feathers showing where old ones had fallen out, in the wings and in most of the body tracts. ”

“ Probably both elements are active; as the relative immunity of the host rises the infectivity or virulence of the parasite must rise to an equal extent to maintain the equilibrium. If this were true we would find that in those localities in which the disease is endemic and where the population is relatively resistant there is a normally more virulent virus in existence. A stranger coming into such a community would, in view of his lower resistance to the virus, be more susceptible of becoming actively infected. ”

“ The virulence of the cholera vibrio can be exalted by passage through guinea pigs—successive culturing of the peritoneal exudate of intraperitoneally infected animals alternating with culture media growth inoculations. Such a fixed virus, the virulence of which cannot be exalted, is the material used by Haffkine in his cholera vaccine. The toxicity of cholera is supposed to be due to an endotoxin which is set free when the vibrios undergo disintegration when lying between the basement membrane and epithelial lining of Lieberkühn’s glands. ”

“ There is often a degree of virulence in the Asiatic plague, in the yellow fever, and in all the other forms of pestilential and malignant diseases, which altogether transcends the process of fever, and extinguishes life in a more summary manner. ”

“ Here are solitary vireos, Maryland yellow-throats, black-and-white creepers, prairie warblers, red-poll warblers, hermit thrushes, red-eyed chewinks, thrashers, catbirds, cedar-birds, and many more. White-eyed vireos are practicing in the smilax thickets,—though they have small need of practice,—and white-bellied swallows go flashing and twittering overhead. The world is good, you say, and life is a festival. ”

“ Lawrence (1953:53) , tells of a male Red-eyed Vireo singling out a female from a flock of migrants passing through his territory and violently driving her to the ground. Shortly after this attack the pair was seen searching for a nest site. But such an incident has not been reported for other vireos, nor have I witnessed such behavior myself.
Early courtship activities of the Bell Vireo are characteristically violent affairs, with the male directing strong aggressive attacks toward the female. Rapid, looping flights through the thickets occur, the female leading the male. ”

“ It is remarkable how unequally these baneful visitations affect the different races of the inhabitants. The Indians and the lighter classes of half-castes are most frequently attacked by the verugas; the whites are less liable to the disease, whilst the negroes and people of the darker shades of mixed blood seldom suffer from it. The Indians and the Chinos are particularly liable to the uta. ”

“ The discovery made him famous, and from that day to this the name of Virchow has held somewhat the same position in the world of pathology that the name of Pasteur occupied in the realm of bacteriology. Virchow was called presently to a professorship in the University of Berlin. In connection with this chair he established his famous Institute of Pathology, which has been the Mecca of all students of pathology ever since. He did a host of other notable things as well, among others, entering the field of politics, and becoming a recognized leader there no less than in science. ”