Observations on four hundred cases of anchylostomiasis / by F.M. Sandwith.

  • Sandwith, Fleming Mant, 1853-1918.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on four hundred cases of anchylostomiasis / by F.M. Sandwith. 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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    them by a strong stream of water, and they must then be pulled out by forceps. I examined about fifty cases to see the proportion of male to female worms, and found it 56 to 44 per cent. This is not in accordance with some of the authorities,1 * who say that males are always more rare than females, and that males are less influenced than females by the action of cxpellent drugs. Treatment.—The native remedies for the disease are barbarously crude. As no one knows the real cause of the disease, no attempts are made to expel the parasite. Most patients bear on their heads, legs, or epigastria the scars left by the barber’s application of red-hot sickles or nails to relieve pain. One man came to the hospital after the rough treatment of the actual cautery with a large slough on his back, iu the midst of which a small artery was spurting. Some patients have in addition setons placed in their ears and at the pit of the stomach, and others have been bled from the arm or from under the tongue. A few men have been advised to eat for their obvious anaemia iron filings mixed with sugar, but in this remedy they have very little faith. The rational treatment is, of course, twofold,—to expel the worms and to treat the anaemia. Before I ever heard of thymol as the specific vermifuge for this disease, I went through a weary apprenticeship of failing to get rid of the parasite with other drugs.3 When I first learnt the powers of thymol on the aiichy- lostomum, I experimented on a dozen patients with santo- nine, male fern, &c., before giving thymol. In every case the bulk of the worms were not removed until after the administration of thymol. Two patients voided 324 and 120 ancliylostoma respectively after thymol, though not a single worm had been expelled by means of other drugs. But for the last three years I have looked upon it as waste of time to administer any other anthelmintic than thymol 1 ‘ Traite de Zoologie medicate,’ par B. Blanchard, Paris, 1889, vol. i, p. 765. J So lately as November 25th, 1891, the ‘ Semaiue medicale ’ tells of cases of anchylostomiasis at Lyons treated with 15-gramme doses of Extract. Filicis Maris Liq., and consequent death with tetanic symptoms. Professor Lepine thereupon recommended that the maximum dose should not exceed 8 grammes.