Comments on: Without Purse or Scrip in Texas: 9 July – 31 July 1900

By: Juvenile Instructor » Southwestern States Mission: Evil Spirits

Juvenile Instructor » Southwestern States Mission: Evil Spirits — Sun, 06 May 2012 05:03:06 +0000

[...] Jones. The series is inspired by Ardis Parshall’s serial posting of the missionary diary of Willard Larson Jones at Keepapitchinin. Previous [...]

By: Juvenile Instructor » Southwestern States Mission: Heathens and Home Missions

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 05:06:11 +0000

[...] Jones. The series is inspired by Ardis Parshall’s serial posting of the missionary diary of Willard Larson Jones at Keepapitchinin. Previous [...]

By: Juvenile Instructor » Southwestern States Mission: Mission Presidents at General Conference

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 06:43:33 +0000

[...] Jones. The series is inspired by Ardis Parshall’s serial posting of the missionary diary of Willard Larson Jones at Keepapitchinin. Previous [...]

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:35:37 +0000

Yeah, I’m with J Stapley. Whatever might have been in that registered letter!?

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:43:05 +0000

One more mystery to take up with the dearly departed when we have the chance!

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:12:55 +0000

Another great edition!

I read it over and did not know what to think about it.

Seriously, that is it? That isn’t fair.

By: kevinf

kevinf — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:41:08 +0000

My grandfather in that mission also notes various bouts with chills and fever, and I had also always assumed malaria. By the end of the 19th century, medicine was just beginning to deal with the link between mosquitoes and infectious disease. The more serious issue was yellow fever, which devastated Memphis in 1878, taking more than 5,000 lives, and forcing half the city's population of 50,000 to flee (see Crosby, The American Plague). Yellow fever was not common in South Texas around the turn of the century, but neither was it unheard of. Malaria was just plain endemic.

By: Edje Jeter

Edje Jeter — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 02:13:28 +0000

Slightly hyperbolic response: if he’s a missionary in the Southwestern States or Southern States Missions in July, he has malaria.

Slightly less hyperbolic response: if he’s a missionary in the Southwestern States or Southern States Missions with fever in July, he has malaria.

Normal response: Malaria could manifest any time but it was most common in the summer, so it’s the right time of year. The most characteristic symptom (at least to this non-doctor reading historical diaries) is cyclical chills and fever, usually coming and going in a 48-hour cycle.

So… fever on the 27th and 29th makes me think he had malaria. Further, that he writes on the 31st, “This was my chill day,” and takes quinine, suggests that he thought it was malaria also.

Going further out on a limb… if his symptoms get worse in the coming weeks, it might be caused by Plasmodium falciparum; if they stay about the same it is more likely caused by Plasmodium vivax.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:09:40 +0000

I’m hoping Edje will have something to say about the chills and fever. It sounds like malaria to me, what very little I know about it, which is extremely little.

I’m guessing, but do not know, that the abbreviation Jno. was developed at the time or in the culture when most people writing it would have been writing in Latin, so that Jno. made a better shortening of Johannes than it does of John. Again, just a guess.

By: Amy T

Amy T — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:58:37 +0000

I’ve seen “John” abbreviated as “Jno.” — who knows why?? With the addition of the period, it’s just as long.