The Sanitarian (Volume 41) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MALARIA AND THE CUBAN CAMPAIGN. By Chakles E. De 31. Sajous. In the spring of 1895 the writer witnessed the departure from Paris of the Two Hundredth Infantry for Madagascar. Beaming with anticipations of a glorious campaign the young soldiers composing the regiment seemed capable of any physical effort; robust, agile, and merry, they appeared able not only to defy the efforts of any human foe, but also to remain invulnerable to .the onslaughts of a more potent enemy?the noxious emanations of marsh-lands and pools. The campaign was pushed with 'energy; but some months later every Parisian's heart was stirred to the utmost by the return of the same .regiment, or, rather, what was left of it; a handful of gaunt, yellow "convalescents," several of whom were soon to follow the nine hundred and odd comrades who had preceded them in the other world. The human antagonist had been a myth; the subtle earth and water-borne enemy had done it all. The Spaniards have already said that their strongest allies would be the febrile diseases of Cuba; yellow fever and malaria. We have no reason to disagree with them, and, if the disastrous Madagascar campaign is taken as theme, it is because from the sanitary aspect there is a striking analogy between it and the Cuban campaign upon which we have just embarked. Geographically, Madagascar and Cuba may be called "sister-isles": the former is centrally traversed by the 22d degree of latitude south, the latter by the 22d degree of latitude north. Both lie to the southeast of the main-land; both are surrounded by warm ocean-currents; both are paradises of fertility?studded with hot-beds of decaying vegetable matter, marshes, and swamps. When the resisting powers of the French and American forces are compared, they may be said to be very similar; ...