A PAEASITIC SCOUEGE OF WAEM CLIMATES. 



By A. JEFFERIS TURNER, M.D. 



[^Read be/ore the Royal Society of Queensland, December 14, 1895. "] 



In the interests of preventive medicine it is desirable that the 

 public should become acquainted with a serious but easily pre- 

 ventable parasitic disease which is widely distributed in all hot 

 countries, but has only been recognised within the last few years 

 as existing in Queensland. 



The parasite which causes this disease is a minute worm, 

 known to science under the rather cumbrous name of Anchylos- 

 toma duodenale. There has been, unfortunately, some confusion 

 as to its generic name, and it is also known as Sclerostoma or 

 Doclimius. All these names refer to the same species of worm. 

 Its habitat is the upper part of the small intestine of the human 

 being, and it lives by sucking the blood of its host m much 

 the same manner as a leech. When present in large numbers — 

 and it sometimes occurs by hundreds or thousands in one 

 individual — it gi'adually reduces the sufferer to a condition of 

 extreme or fatal bloodlessness. 



The Anchylostoma was discovered by Dubini, in Milan, in 

 1838, but it was not till 1854 that Griesinger demonstrated its 

 importance as a cause of disease in Egypt. He found that a 

 condition of anaemia, or bloodlessness, which was very prevalent 

 In Egypt, and was indeed known as " Egyptian chlorosis," was 

 due to this worm. In 1866, Wucherer discovered the same 

 parasite as a cause of a similar disease in Brazil. Since then 

 the parasite has been discovered in many parts of the world. It 

 is known in Southern Europe, Northern, Eastern and Western 

 Africa, also in India, Assam, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, 

 Cochiu-China, Tonquin, Japan, Java and Borneo ; and in the 

 new world in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, 

 the West Indies, and the southern United States. In short, it 

 is probably present in all tropical and sub-tropical countries. In 



