Tropical medicine with special reference to the West Indies, Central America, Hawaii and the Philippines, including a general consideration of tropical hygiene / by Thomas W. Jackson.

  • Jackson, Thomas Wright, 1870-1925.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Tropical medicine with special reference to the West Indies, Central America, Hawaii and the Philippines, including a general consideration of tropical hygiene / by Thomas W. Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    85/564 (page 71)
    In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., there occurred an interesting epidemic of beriberi among the 1276 Filipinos who were brought to the United States in con- nection with the Filipino exhibit and as members of the represen- tative military organizations from the Philippine Islands. This epidemic is said to be the only one of record which has broken out in the United States and it is so reported in the Surgeon-General's report for the army for the year 1905. Captain L. P. Williamson, Assistant Surgeon, United States Army, reported fifty-nine cases with four deaths, as occurring among the entire strength. The Fil- ipino Scouts, a military organization of 450 men, escaped infection completely, being quartered in a model camp which was conducted in strictest accordance with sanitary laws. The native Filipino civilians, to the number of 788, were at first subjected to conditions of extreme overcrowding and filth, in a single building, and the disease appeared under these circumstances. After the correction of these conditions beriberi disappeared, except that the constab- ulary organization, which remained in the building in which the epidemic first occurred, continued to furnish cases during its entire stay, a most suggestive fact pointing to the infection of the building, particularly as the natives who removed to their respec- tive villages ceased to incur the disease. Etiology. It has already been pointed out that sex and age are not determining causes in beriberi and that a tropic climate is not an absolutely essential condition for the disease. Occupa- tion has no particular bearing in this matter, except when asso- ciated with overcrowding, which state favors intimate contact and infection. It cannot be said that the ultimate cause of beriberi is definitely known, but it is highly probable that it is a microbic organism which gains entrance to the body through ingested food or drink, through inspired air or through a lesion of the skin. The usual gateway of infection is, probably, the alimentary tract; the disease organism entering by way of the mouth, multiplies in the stomach and duodenum and elaborates a toxin which causes a local irritation or inflammation of the mucosa at the site of mul- tiplication, usually the duodenum. The toxin is promptly ab-