THE LEMON FOR MALARIA.
A happy chance has led Dr. Magliori to the discovery of an agent of this sort which was traditionally in use by certain Italian families. It is an exceedingly simple thing—merely a decoction of lemon. It is prepared by cutting up one lemon, peel and all, into thin slices, which are then put into three glassfuls of water and the whole boiled down to one glassful. It is then strained through linen, squeezing the remains of the boiled lemon, and set aside for some hours to cool. The whole amount of the liquid is then taken fasting. It is well known that in Italy, Greece, and North Africa, they often use lemon juice or a decoction of lemon seeds, as a remedy in malarial fevers of moderate intensity; and in Guadaloupe they use for the same purpose a decoction of the bark of the roots of the lemon tree. All these popular practices tend to show that the lemon tree produces a febrifuge substance, which resides in all parts of the plant, but which would seem to be most abundant in the fruit. In fact, among the popular remedies employed against malarial infection, that which I have just described is the most efficacious, for it can be employed with good effects in acute fevers. But it is especially advantageous in combating the chronic infection, which is rebellious to the action of quinine, and in removing or moderating its deplorable effects.
Hardly had I learned of this method of medication, when I hastened to induce some proprietors in the Roman Campagna to try it with their farm hands; and, after witnessing the good results there, I endeavored to persuade practitioners to make a trial of the same treatment. I was ridiculed a little at first, for they thought it rather singular that a professor should be trying to popularize on old woman's remedy. In reply to that I answered that practical medicine would not have existed, had it not known how to treasure up from age to age the facts of popular experience; and I ventured to remark that, had the Countess de Chinchon waited until methodical researches had been made into the physiological action of cinchona bark, before popularizing the remedy, the use of which she had learned from the semi-barbarous Peruvians, in all probability humanity would still, as regards malaria, be dependent upon the medication practiced in the middle ages. Happily these arguments had the desired effect upon certain distinguished practitioners, some of whom, especially in Sicily and Tuscany, have already collected together a tolerably large number of very encouraging observations. One of them, Dr. Mascagni, of Avezzo, tried the remedy in his own person, and succeeded in promptly curing an obstinate malarial fever which had resisted the action of quinine.
Gentlemen, in dealing with malaria we ought always to hold popular experience in high esteem, for we owe much to it. We owe to it the fact that we have been liberated from the paludal idea, and furthermore, that we have learned that it is often better, instead of trying to prevent the importation, for the most part imaginary, of malaria from distant marshes, to suppress its production in the soil under our feet or in that immediately surrounding us. We owe to it the knowledge, which we now have, that malaria rises up into the atmosphere only to a limited height, so that by placing ourselves a little above this limit in order to eliminate the possibility of the malaria being carried up to us by oblique atmospheric currents, we are enabled to breathe an air which does not contain this ferment, or which contains it only in insignificant amounts; thus one may even sleep in the open air during the night in very unhealthy districts without running any risks. The knowledge of this fact has led some peoples of Greece, and the inhabitants of the Pontine Marshes, to sleep in the open air on platforms raised on poles four or five meters (twelve to fifteen feet) in height. Some people in the Roman Campagna have built houses for themselves on top of the ancient tombs, the walls of which are perpendicular; the American Indians fasten their hammocks as high up as possible to the trees of the malarious forests; and very recently, the engineers of the Panama Railroad had little wooden huts built in the trees in order to procure safety against the terrible outbreak of malaria which occurred during the construction of that iron way. We owe, finally, to this popular experience the discovery of the specific action of quinine, and the consequent preservation of thousands and thousands of human lives. Why should we reject a priori and without investigation other useful data which it may yet present to our consideration? If we wish to make progress in this question of rendering malarious countries healthy, we must always hold before our eyes a double object—to find a means of prophylaxis which may be accessible to everybody; and, at the same time, to find a means equally within everybody's reach, to overcome chronic malarial poisoning and its evil consequences. Science is still too far behind to permit us to hope that we shall soon succeed in discovering this second means by purely scientific researches. We ought, therefore, to gather together with great care all the facts which point to the possibility of a solution of this problem, and if the measures to which these facts point seem to be incapable of doing harm, we ought to try them boldly, and not be restrained by a false idea of the dignity of science. The social importance of the problem is too great to allow of its solution being retarded by the fear that scientific men may be accused of having been outrun by the ignorant. True science has none of these puerile susceptibilities; on the contrary, it deems it an honor to be able to seize all the observations of fact, whoever may have been their first recorder, to put them to the crucial test of methodical experiment, and to convert them into a new stepping stone on the march of human progress.
An Address delivered at the Eighth Session of the International Medical Congress, Copenhagen, August 12, 1884.
Della influenza dei boshi sulla malaria dominante nella regiona marittima della provincia di Roma. Annali di Agricoltura, No. 77, 1884. Roma: Eredi Botta.