196 



EoGERS (Lieut.-Col. L.). The Bearing of Assam Tea-Garden 

 Experience on the Problem of the Etiology of Kala-Azar. — Proc. 

 Third All-India Sanitary Conf., Lucknow, January 19th-27th 

 1914, V, pp. 15-20, Suppmt. to Ind. Jl. Med. Research. 

 [Received 6th November 1914.] 



The author has long recommended segregation as a method of 

 combating kala-azar. This method has been carried out on the 

 Nowgong Tea Gardens for 16 years. Striking evidence was obtained 

 that the disease nearly always broke out in that house of a village 

 in which a kala-azar patient from a previously infected place had come 

 to reside ; 150 freshly imported coolies were placed in new lines and 

 50 others for want of room in the old infected one, no cases occurred 

 in the new lines, but at the time of the author's visit 16 per cent, of 

 those in the old were already dead of the disease. It is claimed that 

 the segregation method has reduced the deaths from kala-azar on 

 certain estates from 128 per 1,000 to nil in 6 years. Systematic 

 destruction of bed-bugs in a portion of the infected lines seemed to 

 produce a distinct result, no fresh case occurring for several years in 

 the houses in which this had been carried out. 



In the author's opinion, the principal argimient against the bed- 

 bug as a carrier of the infection is that the disease should be very 

 much more common than is actually the case ; but it is pointed out 

 that persons may live in the same house with persons infected with 

 kala-azar and yet for long escape infection, and after a number of 

 years almost the entire population of a group of huts may die of kala- 

 azar. It is more or less clear that the slow spread of infection is not 

 due to lack of susceptibility to the disease, but to the probability that 

 only a small proportion of the bed-bugs which swarm in every coolie 

 house are carriers. It is probably sufficient for bugs only very 

 rarely to become capable of conveying the infection to enable them to 

 be efficient carriers of the disease. It is argued that the bed-bug 

 theory is at present the only one which affords any reasonable 

 explanation of the incidence and spread of kala-azar. 



LiSTON (Major W. G.), Stevenson (Capt. W. D. H.) & Taylor 

 (Capt. J.). The Use and Advantages of Hydrocyanic Acid Gas as 

 a Disinfectant for Plague-Infected Houses and Ships. — Proc. Third 

 All-India Sanitary Conf., Lucknow, January 19th-27th 1914, 

 V, pp. 162-175, Suppmt. to Ind. Jl. Med. Research. [Received 

 6th November 1914.] 



This is a lengthy and detailed account of experiments with hydro- 

 cyanic acid for killing rats and fleas, which tend to show that this 

 poison is rapidly fatal to these parasites and that the process is capable 

 of practical application. 



Hadwen (S.). Notes on the life-histories of blood-sucking Diptera of 

 British Columbia, with special reference to the Tabanidae. — Proc. 

 Entom. Soc. Br. Columbia, Victoria, B.C., no. 4, N.S., January 

 1914, pp. 46-49. [Received 17th November 1914]. 



In giving a list of Tabanidae known to occur in British Columbia 

 reference is made to the pioneer work of R. V. Harvey, to whose list 



