THE PHILIPPINE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 
VOL. 19 SEPTEMBER, 1921 No. 3 
FILARIASIS IN CHINA 
By J. PRESTON MAXWELL’ 
Of the Peking Union Medical College, Peking, China 
TWENTY-FIVE PLATES AND FOUR TEXT FIGURES 
Among the causes of chronic invalidism and economic loss 
in. China, filariasis may well be considered worthy of a place. 
It is true that the effects are not so striking in its influence 
on the death rate as those of plague among acute affections, or 
malarial fever and dysentery among endemic diseases ; neverthe- 
less in certain regions it plays a large part in diminishing the 
working capacity of a considerable number of the manual work- 
ers and in rendering many of them altogether incapable of 
work. The etiology of the disease, considered in its broad 
aspect, is simple. With the one exception of an ocular filaria 
described first in China by Stuckey and Houghton(43) and 
now classified by Leiper(18) among Thelazia, there is only one 
filaria in China to be found in man; this is Filaria bancrofti. 
Filaria perstans hag been seen once, but not in a Chinese, and 
there was no doubt that the infection had been acquired on the 
west coast of Africa, where the patient had previously resided. 
Thus the subject of filariasis resolves itself into infection 
with Filaria bancrofti. This infection is carried out in China 
as elsewhere by the agency of the mosquito. Culex fatigans 
and C. pipiens are both common in China, although it is possible 
that there are other varieties of the Culicide that are potential 
carriers of the disease. According to Dutton(14) one variety 
of Anopheles is also a potential carrier. Post-mortem examina- 
* Before coming to Peking, Dr. J. P. Maxwell was engaged in medical 
mission work in Fukien Province; this paper represents the results of 
twenty years’ study of the subject and includes material that was compiled 
for a thesis, but which has never been published. 
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