THE HELMINTH PARASITES OF MAN. 311 



common things in children in Brisbane who harbour the parasite. 

 Dr. T. L. Bancroft said he was of opinion that the filarige were 

 introduced from China and the South Sea Islands, and that the 

 aborigines of Australia originally did not harbour the parasite. 

 He stated that filariasis was endemic all along the coast. 



Dr. T. L. Bancroft in 1893 (A.M.G., 1893, p. 258) exhibited 

 specimens of Filariae in blood and chylous urine, making references 

 to the nocturnal appearance of the embryos. 



In 1894 Drs. Peter Bancroft, E. S. Jackson, and T. L. Bancroft 

 (A.M.G., 1894, p. 6) referred to a slight increase of the leucocytes 

 in the blood of infected patients. They give the leucocyte counts 

 of six cases. In three of them there were popliteal abscesses, and 

 the leucocytes varied from 12,000 to 23,750 per c.mm.; in two 

 other cases there were elephantiasis, and the leucocytes varied 

 from 14,500 to 27,300. In the fifth case, about which no details 

 are given, the leucocytes were 5500. No attempt was made to 

 ascertain the type of leucocytes increased, but in such of the cases 

 in which there was a marked increase in their number, either from 

 abscesses or from elephantiasis, it is probable that the increase was 

 chiefly in the polymorphonuclear leucocytes, thus indicating a 

 bacterial invasion of some kind. 



In 1898 (A.M.G., 1898, p. 271) appears a letter from T. L. 

 Bancroft, in which he mentions that he has been able to record the 

 metamorphosis of Filaria sanguinis hominis in the muscles of the 

 thorax of two species of mosquito, viz., Culex ciliaris and Culex 

 vigilax. Also that upon the death of the mosquito the young 

 filariae do not escape from its body into water and therein live a 

 free life, but invariably die, and that those embryo filarige which are 

 destined to develop leave the stomach of the mosquito at an early 

 date and take up their abode in the muscles of the thorax. He 

 suggests that possibly human infection may result from swallowing 

 mosquitoes which have imbibed filarial blood. Early in 1899 

 (A.M.G., 1899, p. 120) this author made another communication 

 referring to his experiments on the transmission of filariae by 

 mosquitoes, in which he stated that he believed water to be the 

 medium into which the embryos escaped after leaving the insect. 

 A very important paper was published later in the same year (Jour. 

 Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S. Wales, XXXIII. , 1889, p. 48-62) by him. 

 In it he deals with the metamorphosis of the young form of F. 

 bancrofti in the body of Culex ciliaris L., the house mosquito of 

 Australia. He induced the mosquitoes which he had bred out 

 from larvae to bite an infected Queensland girl, and was able to 

 demonstrate the presence of actively moving embryos in the 

 mosquito on the sixteenth or seventeenth day, but not before. If 

 the weather were cold, this stage might be delayed till the twentieth 

 day, or even the thirty-fifth day (p. 62). No further development 

 of the embryo occurred even after a sojourn of sixty days in the 

 body of the mosquito. He found that the young filariae were 

 usually present in the thorax, and occasionally in the abdomen. 



