104 



their houses and often passing on their ectoparasites to them. Doctors 

 giving medical assistance to the natives of Senegal should therefore 

 be warned of the probability of the existence of human relapsing fever, 

 while the local administrative authorities should be urged to a strenuous 

 campaign against the animals indicated as carriers of the virus. 



Leger (M.). Documents h6matologiques relatifs au Paludisme a la 

 Guyane Francaise. [Haematological Records relating to Malaria 

 in French Guiana.] — Bull. Soc. Path. Exot., Paris, xi, no. 2, 13th 

 February 1918, pp. 67-73. 



This record of malaria in French Guiana is based upon the docu- 

 ments of the Cayenne Institute of Hygiene, created in 1914. The 

 blood examinations that have revealed the presence of malaria para- 

 sites are recorded in a series of tables. During the three years under 

 review, 1916 showed a marked diminution of malarial endemicity, 

 while in 1915 and 1917 cases of fever were far more numerous. The 

 relative proportion of the forms of malarial parasites present have 

 varied but little during these years. In each year the greatest abun- 

 dance of parasites occurred during the dry season (August to December) ; 

 there is however no season when infection does not exist. Plasmodium 

 vivax has been found to reach its maximum always in the cold season, 

 reaching 42 per cent, of the total infection during the months Decem- 

 ber-March, and falling to 34 per cent, during the rest of the year. 

 The percentage of P. 'praecox is inversely proportional to that of 

 P. vivax. P. malariae remains constant and in very small proportion. 

 The forms and percentages of occurrence are contrasted among the 

 free population of Guiana on the one hand and the penal settlement 

 on the other ; the incidence of the disease is far heavier among the 

 latter owing to their lack of and in difference to hygienic measures. 



A table compares the parasitic forms observed in infants and adults ; 

 this shows that the proportion of infestations by the parasite of benign 

 tertian malaria decreases with age, while those of malignant tertian 

 increase in exactly inverse proportion. The plasmodium of quartan 

 malaria remains at a uniform level. This result is not in accordance 

 with the unicist theory of the haematozoa of malaria. Other obser- 

 vations made in Guiana, without being irrefutable, are also unfavour- 

 able to the hypothesis that P. praecox transforms into P. vivax. In 

 one case, two new arrivals in the Colony, who had had no previous 

 malarial attacks, became infected with P. vivax only. The same 

 infection occurred in the case of three infants born in the Colony. 

 As there has been no fresh contingent of convicts sent out during 

 the last three years, owing to the War, it would be expected that 

 the proportion of infestations of P. vivax would increase, while that 

 of P. praecox would decrease ; the reverse has however been the case. 



A record of 101 cases showing successive parasitic forms gives the 

 following figures ; P. praecox remaining unchanged, 27 ; P. praecox 

 becoming P. vivax, 20 ; P. praecox becoming P. malariae, 5 ; P. vivax 

 remaining unchanged, 18 ; P. vivax becoming P. praecox, 19 ; P. vivax 

 becoming P. malariae, 2 ; P. malariae remaining unchanged, 1; 

 P. malariae becoming P. praecox, 1 ; P. malariae becoming P. vivax, 1 ; 

 mixed forms becoming simple, 7. These statistics do not corroborate 

 the unicist theory regarding the malaria parasite. 



