Morning journal and courier., 1885-12-24
4yhe au11r,1a1 and Gnurier.
Thursday. December 24. 1885.
METHANE AND MALARIA.


 One of the latest explanations of malaria
 is that it is caused by gas called ''methane
 which is developed in mud And it is as
 serted that this gas is now abundant becaus l the damming of streams and rivers for res l eryoirs has made the currents less rapid anc 1 substituted mud for sand on the banks. Al essay in which this theory is supported has l recently been published. It cites the Con necticut as an illustration and holds that the l very early appearance here of malaria, at the 1 first settlement, offers no contradiction be- cause then there was rank vegetable growth and mud with it.
 This is plausible theory, like many other theories that are offered in explanation of a disease with @ great many people in Connecticut wish, they could ex- plain and attack intelligently. But Dr. Rufus H. Griswold of Rocky Hill does not accept this theory. The man who wrote the essay in which it is supported seemed to understand all about malaria in this State but Dr. Griswold, who has lived here for about sixty years, does not find it so easy to understand. He says: "The potential factor of intermittent fever-the essential essence, the necessary force-without which other conditions are powerless for the generation of the disease, is an ungrasped and an un- known quantity. The man who starts in pursuit of his own preconceived theory in re- lation to it finds himself following will-o- wisp that disappears in the fog of his errone- ous assumption, and so returns empty from the chase" This will seem quite as plausi- ble to those who have had malaria as any theory that can be put forward.
 In the course of his answer to the confi- dent essayist on 'tmethane" Dr. Griswold has something interesting to say about the tri- umphs of malaria in this State He says it is not true that wherever malaria has appear ed in the Connecticut valley region in the present epidemic it had appeared before On the contrary, there ahy amount of localities where intermittent has been very rife the last thirteen years, in which case was never before heard of since the English first settled in the valley. Say a hundred years ago there were a few cases in few spots; for the last fifteen years in the lower part of the valley, and for the last ten in the upper part of the State line at the north, every township, every neighborhood, nearly every school district, about every brook and valley, and about every hilltop, has shown number of cases of intermittent or some form of so called malarial disease. Whereas, up to, say, 1870, there had not been so far as is known, among the people residing on the Connecticut and it's tributaries, from the Sound to the Massachusetts line, three cases of indigenous intermittent fever, or anything the like, per year, for the seventy five, or the hundred, or the two hundred years previous, n the last fifteen years there have been forty or fifty. thousand cases or more among the | 5wo hundred thousand people. In some places nearly, in some quite, half the popula- 1 ion have been afflicted in a single season. 1 It is evident that the F'methane" nan does | lot know all about malaria in this State. 1 Anybody who 6oes and can cure it will find | t for his advantage to come here and open | n office.