Yaws

Yaws is a disease also called Frambæsia; Button Scurvy; Verruga Peruviana; Peruvian Wart; Buba or Boba, and Patta (West Indies); Framosi (Calabar); Tetia (Congo); Tonga or Coco (Fiji); Lupani and Tono (Samoa); Fr. and Ger. Pian. It is an epidemic and contagious disease, consisting of an eruption of yellowish or reddish-yellow tubercles, which gradually develop into a moist exuding fungus without marked constitutional symptoms, or with such only as result from ulceration and prolonged discharge—i.e. debility and prostration. Incubation varies from three to ten weeks, and yaws usually only occurs once in the same individual. Yaws is distinctly a tropical disease, depending for its origin on extreme heat and moisture, although there must be other causes necessary for its production, as in India, for example, where the same temperature and moisture exist as in countries where it is endemic, it is unknown. Negroes chiefly suffer from it, but no race is exempt. In Africa yaws is found on the west coast from Senegambia in the north to Angola in the south. It obtains all over the western Soudan, and is more rarely seen in the Nile valley and on the northern and north-eastern African coast-line. It is found in Madagascar, Mozambique, in the Moluccas, Java, and Sumatra. It is also endemic in Ceylon, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa; and in the West Indies in San Domingo, Jamaica, Barbadoes, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Sta Lucia, and Dominica. It exists all over Brazil and in Guiana; also at Punta Arenas in Costa Rica. The duration of the disease is from two to six months, but if neglected it may last for several years. If the course of the disease is protracted, the joints are apt to swell, and ulcers form around them, from which an excessive discharge rapidly undermines the patient's strength. The treatment consists of tonics, iodide of potassium, and a generous diet. The patient must be kept very clean, and local applications made either of dilute nitrate of mercury ointment, carbolic acid, sulphate of copper, or sulphate of iron lotions. It should be remembered that the discharge from the sores is capable of producing a fresh crop of yaws in adjacent parts.