South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 8 (of 8): South Africa and Its Future
History
South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 8 (of 8): South Africa and Its Future
South African War, 1899-1902; Transvaal (South Africa) -- History
In fact, the moist warmth of our English summers is infinitely more
oppressive and less easily borne than the far higher temperatures, but
tempered by comparative absence of moisture, which prevail in the
Karroo. The rarity of sunstroke throughout South Africa is a clinical
observation which establishes the truth of the statements just made. In
the records of a military hospital in the Northern Karroo during the
months from August to April, including therefore the hottest time of the
year, out of 3000 medical cases not a single instance of sunstroke was
noted. The experience gained in this hospital has an additional value
from the circumstance that the gifted physician, the late Dr. Washbourn,
was the observer, and some of the results he records may be more
eloquent than many pages of description. Of the medical cases (nearly
3000), 546 were enteric, 379 dysentery, 296 muscular rheumatism, 258
malaria, 187 "continued fever," 152 diarrhoea, 93 jaundice, 70
tonsilitis, 71 influenza, and only 43 bronchitis and chest affections.
Dr. Washbourn acutely remarks, "From this list it may be roughly
concluded that the air in South Africa is good; the food bad." It
will be noticed that intestinal diseases form more than a third of the
total. The dysentery was probably due to faulty ingesta and not to the
specific organism usually associated with dysentery, since amoebæ coli
could not be found in the stools. Malaria occurs only in limited areas
in the northern Transvaal and parts of Rhodesia; the Karroo proper and
the coast-belt are entirely free. The causation of malaria is now so
well understood that it must yearly become a more and more preventable
disease. But the great outstanding features of the list, the prevalence
of intestinal diseases, the absence of respiratory troubles, merit
closer examination. The intestinal diseases, under which the muscular
rheumatism, (caused by toxines), the jaundice, and much of the continued
fever, must be included, are due to ingesta, _i.e._ food and water. The
difficulty of obtaining good food, and the absence of sanitation which
is the main cause of the impurity of the water, are the obstacles which
must speedily be overcome in order to make the second feature assume its
proper value in the treatment of disease. The rainfall is everywhere
adequate for the supply of pure water, but this must be properly stored
and kept from contagia. The interesting experiments which Dr. Vivian
Poore has made on the subject of rural hygiene are convincing as to the
possibility of disposing of excreta with complete security to health,
and material profit to the community, without the necessity of abundant
water. He has found that in the dry-earth system of closets, followed by
the application of the excreta to the soil and their superficial burial
in the humus, with subsequent tillage, a perfectly successful system of
drainage is obtainable. In an acre and a half of ground he has for many
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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