79 



Blanchard (M.). Epid6mie de Fievre R6currente d Biki6. [Epidemic 

 of Relapsing Fever at Bikie.] — Ami. Hyg. Med. Colon., Paris, 

 xvii, no. 1, Jan.-Feb.-Mar. 1914, pp. 81-86. 



Relapsing fever has been observed for the first time, in an epidemic 

 form, in the French Congo. The endemic areas were very localised 

 and the inhabitants are usually attacked when children, so that most 

 of the adults become immune. This localisation renders it very 

 probable that infection is transmitted by the usual carrier of African 

 relapsing fever, OrnifJwdorus moubata. This tick is sluggish and only 

 leaves the soil to bite individuals lying on the earth. It hides after 

 feeding, though accidentally it may be retained in the clothing and 

 transported elsewhere. An epidemic occurred among some tirailleurs 

 who acted as police at Omoye to the north of Bikie, but the disease was 

 not transmitted to any of the natives of Bikie when the infected 

 detachment returned there at the end of the mihtary operations. 

 Probably these tirailleurs were infected during the nights they passed 

 in the villages abandoned by the natives at Omoye, and the disease 

 did not spread in Bikie, since there were no ticks present, every effort 

 to find any proving a failure. Investigations were next made to 

 ascertain whether lice played any part in transmitting the spirillum 

 of the disease, since they are the intermediate hosts of this fever in 

 North Africa. All efforts in this direction proved negative. Many 

 infected people carrying numerous lice about them lived and moved 

 freely among other healthy people, but in no case did the louse prove 

 capable of transmitting the disease. Many lice taken from infected 

 patients were dissected, but no spirochaetes were found. 



Leboeuf ( — ). La Lepre en Nouvelle Cal6donie et Dependences. 



[Leprosy in New Caledonia and its Dependencies.]— .4rm. Hyg. 

 Med. Colon., Paris, xvii, no. 1, 1914, pp. 177-197. 



This paper contains a detailed description of leprosy and deals with 

 its occurrence, symptoms and means of propagation. The idea that 

 leprosy is perhaps transmitted by the bite of a blood-sucking insect, 

 dates back to 187G (Leloir). The elaborate work of Bourret, Ehlers 

 and With in the Danish Antilles and that of D. H. Currie at Honolulu, 

 do not at all support the theory of transmission of the disease by insects. 

 The author has also investigated the part played by mosquitos, bugs, 

 fleas and lice (the only insects which can be suspected in New Caledonia), 

 but the result of his observations is that these insects play no part at 

 all in transmitting leprosy. This is not so in the case of the house-fly, 

 for the author has proved that Musca domestica can absorb enormous 

 quantities of Hansen's bacillus whilst feeding on leprous ulcers and that 

 these bacilli can be recovered very abundantly from the evacuations 

 of the flies thus infected. The fly may thus prove very dangerous by 

 depositing its faeces on the mucous membranes or on the skin. It 

 was found that on dissecting twenty-three house-flies taken from a 

 house scarcely 150 metres from a lepers' infirmary no Hansen's bacilli 

 could be recovered, whilst of thirty-six flies captured in one of the 

 rooms of the infirmary, nineteen gave positive results. Transmission 

 can then only occur in a very limited area near the infected person. 

 This means of infection does not by any means exclude contagion by 



