Protozoa and disease, comprising sections on the causation of smallpox, syphilis, and cancer. Part II / by J. Jackson Clarke.

  • Clarke, James Jackson.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Protozoa and disease, comprising sections on the causation of smallpox, syphilis, and cancer. Part II / by J. Jackson Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    As the result of the zeal of workers abroad, we have now more definite knowledge of the infectious diseases more or less peculiar to the tropics than we have of our own fevers. It may be asked whether this is because the parasites that cause disease in the tropics are larger or, like the flagellates, more readily recognised as parasites than those that constitute the infections of temperate climates; or whether it may be that the conditions of investigation are better in India and other British colonies than they are at home. In spite of the work that has been done, the nature of the infection of some tropical diseases still demands elucidation. Dengue, a fever com- pared to influenza by Manson, and yellow fever are still under investi- gation. The position of the pathology of yellow fever is particularly interesting. It has been established, mainly b}'' the late Walter Reed, Major in the American Army, that the Stegomeia fasciata, a gnat which breeds chiefly about houses, is the sole carrier of the disease; and by covering water-butts and preventing chance collec- tions of water these gnats are kept down and the spread of the disease is stopped. By these simple measures this disease has been practically stamped out in many seaports and other places previously notorious for it.^ Among the ectoparasites that carry protozoan and other infective diseases, ticks of various kinds have recently been shown to play a more important part than was previously suspected. A tick was mentioned in Part I. as the carrier of the destructive cattle disease caused by a piroplasma. Recently an important advance has been made in our knowledge of the piroplasmata by Christophers,^ who has traced the complete life-history of P. canis, as observed in India, the more important part of the parasite's life being passed in the gut and tissues of a tick. Tick-fever is a name given to the African remittent fever, which, like the European fever of the same name, is associated with ' The whole history of yellow fever emphasizes the immense value of a new idea which is at the same time a rational induction based upon wide observation. Without Manson's 'mosquito-malaria' theory neither our knowledge of the mode of convection of malaria nor that of yellow fever would liave become known. - S. R. Christophers, BriV. Med. Jourii., January 12, 1907. I—2
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