CHAPTER I. MALARIA—ITS SUPPOSED ORIGIN.
Thus stood the question of malaria towards the close of the last century, and for some years afterwards; its existence in certain localities was never questioned—no one pretended to say that the fens of Lincolnshire and of Cambridgeshire, the lowlands of Essex and Kent, the muddy shores of the Scheldt and the Lower Rhine, the delta through which the rapid Rhone finds its way to the Mediterranean, were healthy countries. No one questioned the presence of malaria there, or its power to inflict the plague of intermittent or remittent fever on most strangers and on not a few natives who happened, unfortunately for themselves, to be susceptible of its influence. The poison gave to the Pontine Marshes a world-wide celebrity.
Again, of the more terrible febrile diseases of tropical climates, it was suspected by many and boldly asserted by most medical men, that to a malaria identical with that of Europe, but more concentrated by high temperature, they owed their origin. Yet no one up to the period I allude to—no physician, at least—had ascribed to neglected drains, ill-conditioned sewers, imperfectly trapped cesspools, overflowing dead-wells, &c., the origin of a malaria much more destructive than the celebrated malaria of fenny or marshy countries, the malaria, if such it really be, equal to the production of that plague, never absent, at times most destructive—the dreadful typhus[3] of Western Europe.
At last one man, a shrewd, intelligent, and influential observer, a man of genius, gave to the whole question a new phasis. Since his day his hypothesis (for we shall presently find that as yet it deserves no better name) has undergone a variety of modifications, as was to be expected, in no way, however, affecting the practical deductions originally drawn from it by its author. A brief history of this curious episode in medicine, honoured by some with the pompous title of “a revolution in sanitary science,” will fitly precede the inquiry on which I am about to enter. Like the small white cloud warning the navigator of the approaching tornado, this hypothesis, from its first appearance as a humble essay in a monthly journal, has repeatedly assumed, by force of circumstances, gigantic dimensions. Of it, as of Rumour, it may be truly said, Vires acquirit eundo: it gathers strength from motion. As is usual in England, a machinery has been tacked to it of a character most heterogeneous, but withal so heavy as already to threaten to surpass endurance—of the truth of which remark no further evidence need be adduced than the modest demand of six millions sterling to depurate or cleanse the Thames of those very materials which, as a first experiment, and by no means an unprofitable one, the Sanitary Board ordered and compelled the inhabitants of London to throw into it. A brief history of this remarkable phasis of sanitary science, as it is called, may prove acceptable to my readers.
CHAPTER II. THEORIES OF MACCULLOCH.
About thirty years ago, as I have already remarked, one of the most distinguished practical geologists of this or any other country directed his attention to a subject of much greater difficulty than the classification of rocks, and their subdivision into primary, secondary, volcanic, and transition. His object was to discover the origin or cause of those fatal diseases which, under the names of fever, dysentery, plague, rheumatism, &c., render the position of man on the globe so precarious, his life at times so brief, valueless to himself or to others, his prospects so gloomy; in brief, by tracing to its origin, if possible, the active agent of such woes to man, to destroy its fatal influence by practical hygienic measures. In a word, Dr. Macculloch hoped, by discovering the cause, to devise the means either of effectually destroying malaria—using the term, however, in a sense at that time peculiar to himself—or so to mitigate its effects as to render it less destructive to mankind.
He, an acute and original observer, statistician, and scientific man, properly so called, did not require to be instructed as to the lamentable results which the premature death of millions causes to the surviving relatives—results so eloquently and so correctly depicted by the illustrious Quetelet in his work on Man.[4] Of all this he was well aware, and a consciousness of such a condition of humanity, and a firm belief in the opinion that the cause lay in some defect in our social system, remediable by human means, led to those inquiries on which the late Dr. Macculloch based his theory of a universal malaria the cause of most diseases—a theory now adopted in its entirety by a large section of the medical faculty, and by the English Government of the present date.
The theory or theories of Macculloch,[5] as expounded by himself, amounted in fact to this—that a poison, which may be called malaria, is generated by vegetable and animal substances whilst undergoing decomposition or putrefaction, and that to the presence of this poison may be traced most of the diseases afflicting civilized man. In a neglected drain or sewer he saw the cause of typhus, of agues, of skin disease, neuralgias, &c.