Climate and Health in Hot Countries and the Outlines of Tropical Climatology: A Popular Treatise on Personal Hygiene in the Hotter Parts of the World, and on the Climates That Will Be Met Within Them.Giles, George Michael James
Science
Climate and Health in Hot Countries and the Outlines of Tropical Climatology: A Popular Treatise on Personal Hygiene in the Hotter Parts of the World, and on the Climates That Will Be Met Within Them.
Giles, George Michael James
Hygiene -- Popular works; Medical climatology; Tropical medicine
(4) The process of multiplication of the parasites within the human body
is by simple division, or non-sexual breeding of the single cell of
which each parasite consists; but by a well-known law of the
life-history of this class of animalcules this method of multiplication
cannot continue indefinitely without the intervention of a period of
sexual multiplication; and this can not occur within the human subject
under any circumstances, but only in the bodies of certain species of
mosquitoes; so that the disease always tends to wear itself out,
provided the strength of the patient holds out sufficiently long; and
the parasites are unable to find their way into the blood of other human
beings by natural processes, unless mosquitoes of certain special
species be present.
(5) If, however, a human being infected with malaria be bitten by a
mosquito of the appropriate sort, the parasites, sucked into the stomach
of the mosquito along with its meal of blood, undergo further
development into distinct male and female animalcules, whose union gives
birth to myriads of germs which, although incapable of further
multiplication within the organism of the insect, find their way into
its salivary glands, which are the organs in which the irritating poison
of the mosquito is elaborated, and so are necessarily inoculated into
the tissues of any human being whom the mosquito may bite, with the
result that a new victim becomes infected, and the chain of events
commences anew.
(6) The malarial parasites can exist in the mosquito only within certain
limits of temperature, and hence the disease is not found in countries
where the maximum summer temperature is less than 76° F., or in places
so hot that the temperature rises above 86° F. for any length of time,
and the comparative healthiness of many hot continental climates is due
to the fortunate circumstance that a period of excessive dry heat
follows immediately on the cold season.
In considering the measures of prevention detailed below, it must be
remembered that their importance is enhanced by the fact that not only
malaria, but also the blood-worm disease already alluded to, or
filariasis, and yellow fever, have also been shown to require the
intervention of mosquitoes for their transmission from man to man, and
that although not carried by mosquitoes, the germs of sleeping sickness
are also probably conveyed by a winged insect, so that many of the
measures detailed below will have a certain value also in the prevention
of the last-mentioned disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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