hunter: experiments with sand fly. 315 



subject requires the consideration of the digestive tract, and 

 this Assistant Professor Hungerford has presented in paper 

 No. 10, of this number. 



The Thompson-McFadden Pellagra Commission, with head- 

 quarters at Spartanburg, S. C, is conducting an exhaustive 

 survey into all possible factors which might reveal the cause 

 of this disease, and the Bureau of Entomologj^ is cooperating 

 with this commission along entomological lines. The depart- 

 ment of entoinology at the University is concerned only with 

 the entomological side of the question, and has thus far dealt 

 only with the sand fly. The responsibility for the entomologi- 

 cal side of the question rests with the author, and the patho- 

 logic side, as manifested by the monkeys subjected to the bite 

 of the sand fly, rests with Dean Crumbine of the medical 

 school. In this connection it might properly be noted that 

 recently Doctor Harris has published an article in which he 

 states he has been successful in producing pellagra- experi- 

 mentally in monkeys. Based upon his experiments, then, the 

 monkej' becomes a susceptible animal. 



The line of investigation followed was: transfusions on 

 guinea pigs and monkeys, and transference of flies, exposed to 

 the pellagrins, to monkeys and guinea pigs. In the experi- 

 ments with each exposed animal there was a check or unex- 

 posed animal. 



The transfusions and inoculations gave no positive results. 

 Temperatures of the guinea pigs and monkeys were taken 

 twice a day without any appreciable change. As this subject 

 has been covered in a paper by Anderson and Goldberger,- 

 who obtained similar results, we will pass to what we con- 

 sider the more important phase of the Sambon theory, viz., 

 the role of the sand fly. 



His theory is protozoal, and, from analogy with the etiology 

 of malaria, the parasite of pellagra in all probability would 

 have to pass one stage in the body of its intermediate sand-fly 

 host before it could restime its life in the human body. This 

 hypothesis being true, transfusions obviously would be without 

 results. 



Taking up the sand fly, then, the only species found generally 

 distributed in Kansas thus far is Simiiliiim viftatiim, as de- 

 termined by Johannsen. S. reptans is the species referred to 



2. Jour. A. M. A. Lx. No. 25. June 21, 1913, 1948-1949. 



3. Public Health Rep., 1911, XXVL, 1003-1007. 



