Abstract
THIS, the third edition of Sir Leonard Rogers's well-known work, has, in our opinion, been improved by the pruning process to which it has been subjected, but it may be doubted whether the process has been sufficiently drastic, and personally we should breathe a sigh of relief if the “Burdwan fever” and some other hardy perennials were finally laid to rest. The distinguishing character of the author's method is the great importance which he attaches to the study of temperature charts and to leucocyte counts as means of diagnosis, with the result that, perhaps unwittingly, he scarcely emphasises sufficiently that in diseases of a parasitic nature these can be only of secondary importance. Thus “a great leucopenia” may be “greatly in favour of kala-azar,” but a diagnosis can be made with certainty only in one way, viz. by finding the parasites; and as it is not stated whether this has been done in the many examples, accompanied by charts, given of “this disease,” we are uncertain whether they really are “this disease,” or examples of another disease, possibly the 43 per cent, of “kala-azar” cases in which parasites are not found, and which, for all we know to the contrary, may also show “a great leucopenia.”
Fevers in the Tropics.
By Sir Leonard Rogers. Third edition. Pp. xii + 404 + 9 plates. (Oxford Medical Publications.)(London: Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.) Price 30s net.
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S., J. Fevers in the Tropics . Nature 105, 33 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105033a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105033a0