Again I was scarred for a long period after the venomous attacks of
mosquitoes and sandflies combined at Kuala Klang, on the Malay coast,
in its old days of fever, before it started a new sanitary career
under the name of Port Swettenham. Yet these myriad bites produced
fever of no sort, although I was at that time pronounced a malarial
subject. I did not remain in Kuala Klang long enough to be affected by
its unhealthiness; but, had Lady Anopheles been justly blamed, the
terrible biting I underwent should have taken effect, irrespective of
my removal. On the contrary, my own experience of fever was connected
entirely with locality and never with mosquitoes. Intermittent fever,
the genuine article, with its burnings, its icings, its whole
programme of miseries, had me constantly in its grip during residence
at a particular house in Kuala Lumpur, the Capital of the Federated
Malay States. My one compensation was freedom from mosquito bites.
When I left that abode, fever left me, and soon after mosquitoes began
to feed on me again with infinite relish. What matter? It was a proof
of sound blood, freedom from that worse scourge, malaria!
To turn from the personal to what is far more important, the general,
let us consider the Medical Reports from that haunt of malaria, the
Malay Peninsula.
The year 1911 in the Federated Malay States held the unpleasant
distinction of being particularly malarious. The mosquito theorists
explained as cause a great influx of, often, unhealthy coolies from
India, and much clearing of land, which distributed the mosquitoes,
and drove them into the houses and among the inhabitants. But, if
mosquitoes be culpable, why should this same year have also been
particularly unhealthy in regard to most diseases, phthisis excepted?
Yet the Medical Report for 1912 shows that, concomitantly with a fall
in malaria, 1,010 fewer cases of dysentery were this year treated in
hospital. There were 77 notified cases of smallpox, as against 286 in
1911; 29 cases of cholera, as against 620; and 5,676 cases of
beri-beri, as against 6,402. The greater prevalence of disease in
general in 1911 surely shows that the causes for its specific forms
must be deeper seated than mere insect bites. Yet so dominating is the
fashion to rivet attention on such factors as these that fundamental
troubles, even when known, appear often to be unheeded.
The F. M. S. Medical Report for 1912 provides a good instance, taken
from the portion dealing with the Institute for Medical Research,
Kuala Lumpur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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