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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    Besides Egypt, reports have come from Africa, from various places on the west coast, stretching from the Senegal to the Congo, and from Abyssinia, Zanzibar, and the Comoro Islands. Sonsino has found it in Tunis. In Asia, discoveries of this disease have lately been made in Cochin, Lower Bengal,1 Assam, Burmah, Ceylon, Borneo, Japan, and the Malay Archipelago. On the American continent the disease has been found in some of the southern United States, the Antilles, and in Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, thus stretching its area of preva- lence to 30° S. latitude. It has also been found in Queens- land. In Egypt itself my hospital cases show that the disease is very widely spread, for I have had peasants from every province in Upper and Lower Egypt, those near Cairo being naturally most often represented. I hoped at first that the patients might come from only a few villages, where the disease could be treated energetically and perhaps stamped out; but my notes tell of more than fifty villages affected in Upper and more than fifty in Lower Egypt. The figures show that 41 per cent, of patients came from Upper Egypt,48 per cent, from Lower Egypt, and 11 percent, from Cairo audits suburbs. It is impossible to know what amount of the population is affected, but the statistics of the Recruiting Commissioners for 1892 are worth quoting. Nearly every adult male peasant is liable for conscription, and the conscripts are medically examined in their villages. In Upper Egypt 5988 men were called, and 200, or 3’3 per cent., were rejected for anaemia. In Lower Egypt 661, or 6'2 per cent., were rejected from this cause out of 7420 men. Every province furnished anaemic rejections, but Menoufieh came highest on the list with 13'9 per cent., while I find from hospital statistics that no less than fifteen villages in that province are infected. The recruiting medical officer, who is an Englishman, only rejects those who are obviously too anaemic to serve with the colours, accepting many who are already the hosts of the bloodsucking worm. Thus the 1 Dr. Dobson, in examining 547 of the healthiest loolcing coolies from India, found ancbylostoma present in no less than 454 (‘ Annual Sanitary Report for Assam for 1892,’ Shillong, p. 63).