ant battering
works permanent damage.

How long the infection may lurk in the body is uncertain; certainly for
months, and possibly for years. Many cases are on record which had
typical chills and fever, with abundance of plasmodia in the blood,
years after leaving the tropics or other malarious districts; but there
is often the possibility of a recent re-infection.

Altogether, malaria is a remarkably bad citizen in any community, and
its stamping-out is well worth all it costs.

CHAPTER XIV

RHEUMATISM: WHAT IT IS, AND PARTICULARLY WHAT IT ISN'T

What's in a name? All the aches and pains that came out of Pandora's
box, if the name happens to be rheumatism. It is a term of wondrous
elasticity. It will cover every imaginable twinge in any and every
region of the body--and explain none of them. It is a name that means
just nothing, and yet it is in every man's vocabulary, from proudest
prince to dullest peasant. Its derivative meaning is little short of an
absurdity in its inappropriateness, from the Greek _reuma_ (a flowing),
hence, a cold or catarrh. It is still preserved for us in the familiar
"salt rheum" (eczema) and "rheum of the eyes" of our rural districts.
But this very indefiniteness, absurdity if you will, is a comfort both
to the sufferer and to the physician. Moreover, incidentally, to
paraphrase Portia's famous plea,--

It blesseth him that _has_ and him that _treats_;
'T is mightier than the mightiest.
It doth _fit_ the throned monarch _closer_ than his crown.

To the patient it is a satisfying diagnosis and satisfactory explanation
in one; to the doctor, a great saving of brain-fag. When we call a
disease rheumatism, we know what to give for it--even if we don't know
what it is. As the old German distich runs,--

Was man kann nicht erkennen,
Muss er Rheumatismus nennen.[2]

[Footnote 2: What one cannot recognize he must call rheumatism.]

However, in spite of the confusion produced by this wholesale and
indiscriminate application of the term to a host of widely different,
painful conditions, many of which have little else in common save that
they hurt and can be covered by this charitable name-blanket, a few
definite facts are crystallizing here and there out of the chaos. The
first is, that out of this swarm of different conditions there can be
isolated one large and important central group which has the characters
of a well-defined and constant disease-entity. This is the