{517} The German Doctors
Make A Practice Of Making Microscopic Examinations Of The Blood Of A
Patient, Saying That The
Microbes appear at the commencement of an
attack of fever, increase in quantity as the fever increases, and
decrease as
It decreases, and from these investigations they are
able to judge fairly accurately how many remissions may be expected;
in fact to judge of the severity of the case which, taken with the
knowledge that quinine only affects malarial microbes at a certain
stage of their existence, is helpful in treatment.
There is, I may remark, a very peculiar point regarding haematuric
disease, the most deadly form of West Coast fever. This disease, so
far as we know, has always been present on the South-West Coast, at
Loando, the Lower Congo and Gaboon, but it is said not to have
appeared in the Rivers until 1881, and then to have spread along the
West Coast. My learned friend, Dr. Plehn, doubts this, and says
people were less observant in those days, but the symptoms of this
fever are so distinct, that I must think it also totally impossible
for it not to have been differentiated from the usual remittent or
intermittent by the old West Coasters if it had occurred there in
former times with anything like the frequency it does now; but we
will leave these theoretical and technical considerations and turn
to the practical side of the question.
You will always find lots of people ready to give advice on fever,
particularly how to avoid getting it, and you will find the most
dogmatic of these are people who have been singularly unlucky in the
matter, or people who know nothing of local conditions.
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