What Killed William Q. Judge? Part 1
Fohat Magazine (Summer 2003 - by Ernest Pelletier)
It has long been accepted by theosophists that William Q. Judge, co-Founder of the Theosophical Society (along with H.P. Blavatsky and Colonel H.S. Olcott), died as a result of initially contracting Chagres fever. He died at nine a.m. Saturday, March 21st, 1896 with his wife by his side, an attending professional night nurse, his physician, and his devoted pupil, Ernest T. Hargrove. Investigation suggests that Judge did not die from any disease but rather as a result of iatrogenic causes.
Ague is a term used to define the recurring fever and chills of malarial infection. Popularly, the disease was known by names expressive of the locality in which it was prevalent. Chagres fever, sometimes called yellow fever, is a malarial type of disease with manifested periodic attacks of chills, fever and sweating. Chagres fever was also known as “Panama fever”. The name is derived from Chagres, a port in Panama from which people would reach Panama City on the Pacific Coast by travelling up the Chagres River. Steamships which ran from Boston and New York City to the Caribbean would port at Chagres.
Judge, a struggling young New York commercial lawyer, “travelled often to the northern part of the South American continent and also to Mexico.” His travels in the early 1880s took him to Carúpano, Venezuela, where he was doing business with a silver mining company. During one of his trips Judge was infected with Chagres fever, a “febrile disease caused by an arbovirus, transmitted by phlebotomine sandflies.” This malignant type of malarial fever often has a predilection to develop into tuberculosis.
