Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/379

Rh The formation of an abscess, an attack of tonsilitis, etc., are usually attended by chills and fever, which may recur at more or less regular intervals. Indeed, in certain cases of pyæmia the febrile phenomena are so similar to those of a malarial attack that a mistake in diagnosis is no unusual occurrence. Finally, I may say that it is the fashion with many persons and with some physicians to ascribe a variety of symptoms, due to various causes, to 'malaria' and to prescribe quinine as a general panacea. Thus a gentleman who has been at the club until one or two o'clock at night and has smoked half a dozen cigars—not to mention beer and cheese sandwiches as possible factors—reports to his doctor the next morning with a dull headache, a furred tongue and a loss of appetite which he is unable to account for except upon the supposition that he has 'malaria' Again the symptoms arising from indigestion, from crowd-poisoning, from sewer-gas-poisoning, from ptomaine-poisoning (auto-infection), etc., are often ascribed to 'malaria' and quinine is prescribed, frequently with more or less benefit, for the usefulness of this drug is not limited to its specific action in the destruction of the malarial parasite.

As stated at the outset, it is evident, in the present state of our knowledge, that the term 'malaria' is a misnomer, either as applied to the cause of the periodic fevers or as used to designate this class of fevers. It would be more logical to use the name plasmodium fever and to speak of a plasmodium intermittent or remittent, rather than of a malarial intermittent. But it will, no doubt, be difficult to displace a term which has been so long in use, which up to the present time has had the sanction of the medical profession, and which expresses the popular idea as to the origin of that class of fevers which we now know to be due to a blood-parasite, introduced through the agency of mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles.