The Greenville Times

Sulphur and Malaria.

Dr. L. P. Yandell, of Louisville, Kentucky, has written for the Medical News an able article on sulphur as a preventive of malaria. We heard the same views advanced by Dr. Skinner, of Greenville, several years ago. Dr. Skinner has practiced medicine for many years in malarial regions, and has been a close observer of everything connected with his profession. Several years ago we had many talks with him about the diseases of the country, and we know that he was an ardent advocate for sulphur as a preventive for malaria, and as a cure for malarial diseases. He expressed his firm conviction that sulphur would be found a power in the prevention of the yellow fever. Now that discussion is being carried on in the medical journals on this subject we find that Dr. Skinner's opinion is backed up by many leading physicians. It is complimentary to our townsman to see a theory in which he expressed confidence so long before the leaders of his profession gave their views to the public accepted and endorsed by such high authority in scientific research.

Here is an extract from Dr. Yandell's article:

Sulphate of iron probably stands at the head of deodorants, and its disinfectant properties are generally acknowledged. Sulphurous acid gas is equally destructive to bad smells and vermin; and of its disinfecting powers we are convinced.

In this connection it will be remembered that the bisulphates have been claimed to possess marked malarial power, and some enthusiastic germ maniacs have contended that the power of sulphate of quinia lies in its element of sulphur. Aromatic sulphuric acid has sometimes done good in intermittents, and we have gotten remarkable results in these troubles from sulphate of iron and alum.

Quinia in the Confederate States army was always scarce, and often absent from our hospital stores, and hence many substitutes for it were tried. The writer found the following quite reliable, though certainly not palatable: Dried sulphate of iron, one drachm: powdered alum, four scruples; make into twenty-one powders: one to be taken thrice daily. Many obstinate chronic cases were cured in a week, others in two weeks, and in others failure occurred. In dispensary practice before and since the war, we have gotten similar results. In capsules the prescription might be rendered less unpleasant.

The subject under consideration is one of vital importance to the whole world. Everywhere malaria is now being recognized as the most abundant, widespread and polymorphous of the fever poisons. Regions of America and elsewhere in which malaria has not before existed, as it was claimed, have been ravished by it during the past ten years. For instance in localities in Rhode Island and Connecticut this is the case. While it is probable that malaria has existed all the time to some extent: though maybe in masked and comparatively mild forms, yet the medical profession of Newport and of New Haven could scarcely have failed to recognize intermittent fever as a common disease among them, had it prevailed in the past to anything like the extent it has of late years.

Scurvy, a terrible scourge of days gone by, since the introduction of the potato and the more extensive consumption of fruits and vegetables, is almost unknown. Leprosy and the plague, so prevalent at one time in the better portions of Europe, are now even rarer than scurvy, thanks to the drainage and more abundant and better food and improved ventilation. Smallpox a century ago, every one was liable to, and now its possible prevention is almost universal. But malaria, although preventable and curable to a large extent, remains a potent and almost omnipresent pestilence.