FILARIA PERSTANS 307 



of the swellings and prevention of further growth by care of the 

 general health, avoidance of violent exercise, massage and tight 

 bandaging. In severe cases of elephantiasis of the leg physicians 

 sometimes cut off great masses of the elephantoid tissue, grafting 

 on new pieces of skin to cover the parts operated on. Removal 

 of enlarged growths of the scrotum can usually be accomplished 

 successfully. Another method which has been used with some 

 success is an operation for the draining of the lymph from the 

 tissue all the way into the bone or even from the bone itself. 



Castellani has recently found a method of reducing elephantoid 

 tissue which will probably supplant all of the above methods. 

 This consists in the injection into the diseased tissues of a drug, 

 fibrolysin, which, as its name implies, has the property of destroy- 

 ing fibrous connective tissue. Elephantoid swellings are re- 

 ported to have been cured by this method in a few months. 



Prevention of filarial diseases can best be accomplished by 

 anti-mosquito campaigns. As far as is known at present mos- 

 quitoes are the only means of transmission which the parasites 

 have. The same preventive measures, therefore, which serve 

 as preventives against malaria, serve also against Filaria ban- 

 crofti, and since the former disease is found practically every- 

 where that the filarise are found, it is possible to prevent the 

 two diseases with one effort. People who carry filariae in their 

 blood should be prevented, as far as possible, from exposing 

 themselves to mosquitoes. In the places where the micro- 

 filarise are periodic and the transmitting mosquitoes are nocturnal 

 this should be perfectly possible, although in such localities as 

 the Philippines and Samoa, where the intermediate host is largely 

 diurnal, it would present almost insuperable difficulties. In 

 places where Filaria is abundant and mosquitoes are not ex- 

 terminated the carrying at night of a bottle of disinfectant, as 

 alcohol or dilute lysol, for immediate application to mosquito 

 bites would be well worth while. 



Other Species of Filaria 



There are, as previously stated, a number of other species of 

 Filaria which inhabit the human body. Filaria (or Acantho- 

 cheilonema) perstans is extremely common in the natives through- 

 out Central Africa and also in parts of northern South America; 



