On filaria / by Joseph Bancroft.

  • Bancroft, Joseph, 1836-1894.
Date:
[between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On filaria / by Joseph Bancroft. 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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    By Dr. Joseph Bancroft, Brisbane. I am asked by my good friend Professor Allen to contribute to the history of filaria and allied diseases of a parasitic nature in Australia, and I put my hand to paper feeling how imperfect the investigations are, and how much is needed to be searched into, before the various bearings of blood-parasitism, as a cause of disease, can be in any small degree understood. It will be much easier to indicate the standing timber that may fall as a harvest to the inquiring student, than to expatiate on the limited fields cleared by the pioneers in this branch of knowledge ; but sufficient has been done by Lewis and Cobbold, now retired to their rest, by Manson and our South American investigators, still struggling with a difficult problem, to encourage our youthful naturalists to work at the subject of blood-parasitism, not merely as it afflicts the human race, but in the wide field of animal life, as there can be little doubt the more extensively the work is prosecuted, the clearer will be our views as to the measures necessary for human sanitation. The subject after a time becomes an interesting study, more fascinating, if possible, than diatomes, and is intimately bound up with the welfare of ourselves and our animal friends. Few things fill the mind with greater surprise than the discovery that the heart of our faithful dog is so filled with worms that his life cannot be expected to last long. On examining a drop of blood of a dog, we can ascertain by the presence of filaria? whether such is the case ; and if we find it necessary to sacrifice our servant, we shall discover in the right side of the heart, and in the pulmonary artery, worms from four to ten inches long, more or less, interfering with the circulation of the blood, leading to dyspnoea, fatness and dropsy. Filaria?, whose embryos float in the blood, may in all cases require the intervention of some blood-sucking creature to assist in their distribu- tion, mosquito, sand-fly, louse, or flea, all of which will need to be examined. With regard to the dog, the study of which is very convenient, as he is always at hand, much information has yet to be got. (Some years ago, I found the louse of the dog with its meal of blood, and in the blood the embryos of Filaria immitis. This information was communicated to the Queckett Microscopic Club by Dr. Cobbold in February 1880. Dr. Prospero Sonsino, of Pisa, whose researches on blood-parasites in Egypt are so well known, in a recent letter reminds me of the com- munication, and is anxious to gain any further information obtainable in our country with regard to this filaria. The dipteron Stomoxys calcitrans also absorbs with the dog's blood the embryo worms. Of these, I once counted fifty-nine in one insect.