Dengue

Dengue, or BREAK-BONE FEVER, also called DANDY and BUCKET FEVER, is a disease first certainly known to have occurred in 1779-80 in Egypt, parts of the East Indies, and probably in Philadelphia. Since that time there have been great epidemics in India and Further India (1824-25), America and West Indies (1826-28), Southern United States (1850), East Africa, Arabia, India, and China (1870-73), besides numerous minor outbreaks. The disease occurs almost exclusively in the tropics, in hot weather, and in towns either near the sea-coast or on large rivers. It is characterised by sudden onset, with high fever, and extremely violent pains in the bones, muscles, and joints; by a remission, usually at the end of one or two days, during which the patient feels almost well; and after one or two days more by a second period of fever, less severe than the first, which lasts for two or three days. Each attack of fever is often accompanied by a well-marked skin-eruption. Though often followed by much emaciation and loss of strength, it is very rarely fatal or succeeded by serious after-effects. It occurs almost always in well-marked epidemics; but observers are much divided upon the question whether it is communicable directly from the sick to the healthy. See Hirsch, Geographical and Historical Pathology, vol. i.