On the endemic haematuria of the south-east coast of Africa / by the late Vasy Lyle ; with an introduction by John Harley ; communicated by John Harley.

  • Lyle, Vasy.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the endemic haematuria of the south-east coast of Africa / by the late Vasy Lyle ; with an introduction by John Harley ; communicated by John Harley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Natives of India—immigrants to this country—are affected by the parasite, and it appears to me, more fre- quently than either Europeans or Kaffirs ; their methods of cooking protect them from the too common tania of South Africa, but they seem to me to suffer from the B. hcema- tobium more generally and more severely than any race inhabiting Natal, neither age nor sex appearing to afford protection. But if there is any truth in my observations respecting the localities in which the entozoon most pre- vails, Indian immigrants more than any other class in Natal should be subject to its ravages, for they are employed for the most part on sugar and on coffee estates. These are situated in the littoral and infested districts, •where the streams are frequently sluggish, flowing through swampy valleys, and hold much organic matter in sus- pension. To afford facilities for bathing and for procuring water for cooking purposes and for drinking, the cottages— hovels I ought to call them—of the labourers are placed as near as convenient to a watercourse or, it may be, to a marshy pool; the available water, previously impure from locality and causes which for convenience may be called natural, is frequently rendered still more impure by the intermixture of drainage from the sugar manufacture or coffee works. I confess the suspicion that this constantly increasing impurity of the water has an influence in increasing the frequency of diseases associated with B. hamatobium has arisen in my mind. I am intimately acquainted with one locality where the aspect of the river valleys on the estate is such as I am accustomed to find where the disease prevails. I resided there for many years, bathed in the waters of the streamlets, and with my family and servants drank of them; we had no other water—and yet during the eight years I lived there I found but very few instances of the disease, and its origin was for the most part to be traced to other localities. No instance of the disease has occurred in my own family. Subsequently a large sugar mill and a distillery were established on the estate, the drainage from which necessarily flowed into the