Dr. John Bartlett is a gentleman of Chicago, of good standing in the profession. In January, 1874, he published in the Chicago Medical Journal a paper on a marsh plant from the Mississippi ague bottoms, supposed to be kindred to the Gemiasmas. In a consideration of its genetic relations to malarious disease, he states that at Keokuk, Iowa, in 1871, near the great ague bottoms of the Mississippi, with Dr. J. P. Safford, he procured a sod containing plants that were as large as rape seeds. He sent specimens of the plants to distinguished botanists, among them M. C. Cook, of London, England. Nothing came of these efforts.
2. In August, 1873, Dr. B. visited Riverside, near Chicago, to hunt up the ague plants. Found none, and also that the ague had existed there from 1871.
3. Lamonot, a town on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, was next visited. A noted ague district. No plants were found, and only two cases of ague, one of foreign origin. Dr. B. here speaks of these plants of Dr. Safford's as causing ague and being different from the Gemiasmas. But he gives no evidence that Safford's plants have been detected in the human habitat. In justice to myself I would like to see this evidence before giving him the place of precedence.
4. Dr. B., Sept. 1, 1873, requested Dr. Safford to search for his plants at East Keokuk. Very few plants and no ague were found where they both were rife in 1871.
5. Later, Sept. 15, 1873, ague was extremely prevalent at East Keokuk, Iowa, where two weeks before no plants were found; they existed more numerously than in 1871.
6. Dr. B. traced five cases of ague, in connection with Dr. Safford's plants found in a cesspool of water in a cellar 100 feet distant. It is described as a plant to be studied with a power of 200 diameters, and consisting of a body and root. The root is a globe with a central cavity lined with a white layer, and outside of these a layer of green cells. Diameter of largest plant, one-quarter inch. Cavity of plant filled with molecular liquid. Root is above six inches in length, Dr. B. found the white incrustation; he secured the spores by exposing slides at night over the malarious soil resembling the Gemiasmas. He speaks of finding ague plants in the blood, one-fifteen-hundredth of an inch in diameter, of ague patients. He found them also in his own blood associated with the symptoms of remittent fever, quinine always diminishing or removing the threatening symptoms. Professors Babcock and Munroe, of Chicago, call the plants either the Hydrogastrum of Rabenhorst, or the Botrydium of the Micrographic Dictionary, the crystalline acicular bodies being deemed parasitic. Dr. B. deserves great credit for his honest and careful work and for his valuable paper. Such efforts are ever worthy of respect.
There is no report of the full development found in the urine, sputa, and sweat. Again, Dr. B. or Dr. Safford did not communicate the disease to unprotected persons by exposure. While then I feel satisfied that the Gemiasmas produce ague, it is by no means proved that no other cryptogam may not produce malaria. I observed the plants Dr. B. described, but eliminated them from my account. I hope Dr. B. will pursue this subject farther, as the field is very large and the observers are few.
When my facts are upset, I then surrender.
"NOTES ON MARSH MIASM (LIMNOPHYSALIS HYALINA). BY ABR. FREDRIK EKLUND, M.D., STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, PHYSICIAN OF THE FIRST CLASS IN THE SWEDISH ROYAL NAVY.
[Footnote: Translated from the Archives de la Medecine Navale, vol. xxx., no. 7, July, 1878, by A. Sibley Campbell, M.D., Augusta, Ga.]