The cause ofhemolytic crises in this disease is unknown (mainly due to intravascular haemolysis). There is rapid and massive destruction ofred blood cells resulting inhemoglobinemia (hemoglobin in the blood, but outside the red blood cells),hemoglobinuria (hemoglobin in urine), intense jaundice,anuria (passing less than 50 milliliters of urine in a day), and finally death in the majority of cases.[citation needed]
Blackwater fever is a serious complication of malaria, butcerebral malaria has a highermortality rate. Blackwater fever is much less common today than it was before 1950.[4] It may be thatquinine plays a role in triggering the condition,[5] and this drug is no longer commonly used for malariaprophylaxis. Quinine remains important for treatment of malaria.[6]
Blackwater fever should be suspected in a malaria patient who is intermittently passing dark-red to black urine, and is diagnosed using a urine dipstick test, which will be positive for hemoglobin. Microscopy of urine will be negative for erythrocytes.[7]
Brigadier GeneralCharles Young first contracted malignant malaria, also known as blackwater fever, in 1913 during a military expedition in Liberia. Given his vulnerability to the disease, he and his family understood that military orders dispatching him back to Liberia in 1921 were akin to suicide, but he refused to retire from the U.S. Army or try to alter his military orders. He contracted the disease again during a visit to Nigeria and died in 1922. The U.S. Army posthumously promoted Young to Brigadier General in 2021.[8][9][10]
Prior to his photography career,Henri Cartier-Bresson[11] contracted blackwater fever while hunting in Western Africa. Expecting to die, he sent instructions to his family on his wishes for a funeral. He made a full recovery.
British mariner and naval officerCharles Lightoller contracted malaria c. 1897 during his tenure inElder Dempster Lines. In his autobiography, he describes suffering from severe complications, including blackwater fever and a temperature of 106°F. He was treated by his shipmates and made a full recovery.[citation needed]
ZoologistJohn Samuel Budgett died from the disease in 1904, after returning from a collecting trip to West Africa, in search of specimens of the fishPolypterus.[12]
Humanitarian and MMA fighterJustin Wren contracted malaria, which devolved into blackwater fever, while drilling water-wells forCongo Pygmies in 2013. The affliction nearly claimed Wren's life. He was misdiagnosed four times and required airlift to Uganda, where he narrowly recovered from severe symptoms.[14]
Aeneas,Jeannie Gunn's husband, is described as having died from Blackwater Fever or Malarial Dysentry at Elsey Station in the Northern Territory in 1903.[citation needed] She later authored the classic accountWe of the Never Never.
Stand on Zanzibar, a 1968 science-fiction novel byJohn Brunner quotes a line from thesea chanty "The Bight of Benin": "The bight of Benin, the bight of Benin! Blackwater fever and pounds of quinine!"[15]
^World Health Organization (2021).World Health Organization model list of essential medicines: 22nd list (2021). Geneva: World Health Organization. p. 22.hdl:10665/345533. WHO/MHP/HPS/EML/2021.02.
^"John Samuel Budgett (1872–1904): In Pursuit of Polypterus" BioScience May 2001 / Vol. 51 No. 5
^Martin, Douglas (September 27, 2005)."Don Adams, Television's Maxwell Smart, Dies at 82".The New York Times.Don Adams, who played Maxwell Smart in the 1960s sitcom "Get Smart", combining clipped, decisive diction with appalling, hilarious ineptitude, died on Sunday at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 82.
^Brunner, John (1969).Stand on Zanzibar. New York: Ballantine.ISBN978-0345027580."Stand on Zanzibar, a 1968 science-fiction novel by John Brunner quotes a line from the sea chanty "The Bight of Benin": "The bight of Benin, the bight of Benin! Blackwater fever and pounds of quinine!""
