MOLLUSKS AND MEDICINE IN WORLD WAR II 



By R. Tucker Abbott 



Assistant Curator, Division of MoUusks, 



United States National Musetim 



[Wilh 3 plates] 



When American troops of MacArthur's Sixth Army landed on the 

 eastern shores of Leyte Island to begin the liberation of the Philippine 

 Islands, they were committing themselves not only to a bitter military 

 struggle but also to one of the strangest of the many medical battles 

 of the Pacific campaign. Within a week our troops had fanned out 

 over an area which is highly infectious with a fatal snail fever or 

 blood-fluke disease known at that time to only a comparatively small 

 number of tropical-disease experts. Up through Gloucester, Finsch- 

 hafen, and Hollandia many of the men had come, fighting Japs with 

 a rifle in one hand, warding off malaria with a yellow atabrine pill in 

 the other. Here on Leyte the malaria mosquito was almost unknown, 

 but in its place was a tiny fresh-water snail carrying and spreading a 

 parasitic disease which, if left untreated, led to extreme enlargement 

 of the liver, and usually ended in the death of the victim. 



Characteristically, the disease did not manifest itself among the 

 troops for a number of weeks. Then on New Years Day at an evacua- 

 tion hospital in the town of Palo the first 2 military cases were dis- 

 covered. An intensive survey of our personnel was immediately begun, 

 and the fears of the Army doctors were confirmed by the discovery of 

 973 cases. Before the epidemic could be brought under control, over 

 1,700 Army and 17 Navy men had been stricken by the blood-fluke 

 disease, schistosomiasis. 



NATURE OP THE DISEASE 



"Schisto," as the disease became familiarly known among the troops, 

 is caused by a parasitic trematode worm which lodges itself in the blood 

 vessels of the liver and the mesenteric vessels of the mammalian host. 

 The adult male is about a half inch in length with a large groove along 

 its underside in which the slender and slightly longer female rests 

 during most of her mature life. Each fluke has two round suckers at 



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