Remarks on “Kidinga Pepo”: A Peculiar Form of Exanthematous Disease

EARLY in the month ofTulyI87o, after the complete disappearance of cholera from the island of Zanzibar, a new form of fever, quite unknown to the bulk of the population, became epidemic, more especially in the town, where it attacked almost the entire population. The natives of India resident here were entirely unacquainted with it in their native country, and they named it" homa maguu", or leg-fever, from one of its most prominent symptoms-viz., severe pains in the lower extremi- ties. The Arabs from Oman and the Persian Gulf confounded it with " bardiabis", or rheumatisml, but still acknowledged that many of the symptoms were heretofore unknown to them; and the Arabs from Ilydramaut, in the Gulf of Arabia, spoke of it as a disease with which they were well acquainted in their native country, and they named it " ndefu", a word to which no very distinct meaning in Arabic can be attached. Thiswvord was speedily changed by the Suaheli of Zanzibar into the familiar word "madifu", meaning " beards"; but the name was used only by the slave population. The natives of the mainland seem to have been entirely unacquainted with the disease, as no native term was applied to it. Those inhabitants of Zanzibar who were pretty well advanced in life at once recognised it as a disease which was epi- demic on the east coast of Africa about forty-eight years ago, and which was then called " kidinga pepo".