Calomel and salines should be given after cardiac weakness disappears. To avoid these dangers of the tropical heat one should keep the body clean to promote good action of the sweat glands. The clothing should be light and loosely fitting and should permit a free circulation of air to assist evaporation. There does not seem to be any indication for the wearing of orange-colored clothes as the actinic rays are apparently unimportant. Puntoni recommends green-colored clothing for neck and spine. The green cloth should be covered with white material.
The head and nape of the neck should be protected by a light well-ventilated helmet. Alcohol should be avoided, or at any rate absolutely so, until evening. Water or lemonade should be taken freely and a siesta in the middle of the day is an important conserver of one’s resisting powers.
CHAPTER XLII
CLIMATIC BUBO, AINHUM, GOUNDOU, JUXTA-ARTICULAR NODULES AND VISCERAL MYCOSES
Climatic Bubo
General Considerations
The naval surgeons of various countries have for many years been interested in a condition where inguinal buboes develop which have no relation to venereal infection.
All attempts to find any organism in these lesions have so far failed. Cultures from excised glands or from the necrotic centers of such glands fail to show any growth.
Stained smears and India ink preparations alike fail to show any causative organism. The Wassermann test is also negative. The disease seems much more common in the West Indies than elsewhere, statistics showing it to be about 10 times as often contracted by sailors in those waters as by crews in the seaports of China. In a recent article Rost states that he thinks there is evidence to show that the disease is contracted by sexual intercourse with prostitutes of the colored races. Of his 17 cases all had exposed themselves in this way.
Children never show climatic bubo and it seems peculiarly to affect the young adults composing the crews of ships. Even among the native prostitutes such a condition does not seem to exist and climatic bubo does not affect the male natives.