22 Beport of the Billiarzia Mission in Egypt, 1915 



and suspicion of the mass of the people and their deep-rooted 

 objection to having their names or affairs set down in any paper 

 or book that may form part of the Government archives. Such 

 an ordinary chronic condition as Bilharziosis is frequently not 

 thought worthy of mention in addition to any other disease the 

 patient may wish treated or which may be the cause of death. 

 There are certain beliefs, too, apparently considerably prevalent, 

 which not infrequently account for concealment. Many cases, 

 therefore, go entirely untreated and unrecognized. 



Griesinger [201] found 3'2 per cent of infections in 363 autopsies 

 made in Cairo up to 1856. Sonsino [453] obtained 46 per cent from 

 91 autopsies. In 1894 Kauffman [321] recorded from 500 autopsies 

 that 369 males gave 40 per cent and 131 females gave Hi per cent, 

 i.e., a general average of 33"3 per cent with Bilharzia. Ferguson 

 [168], in 1910, stated that his observations, based on considerably 

 more than 1,000 post-mortem examinations at the Kasr Aini 

 Hospital in Cairo, revealed the presence of this disease in no less 

 than 40 per cent of Egyptian male subjects between 5 and 60 years 

 of age. In 1905 Milton [346] showed that 930 patients were 

 treated for Bilharzia as in- or out-patients at Kasr Aini Hospital 

 during 1901. 



In 1910 Professor Madden [321] pubHshed the figures from the 

 annual reports of the Kasr Aini Hospital for the three years 1907-09, 

 showing a total number of admissions for medical and surgical 

 diseases 11,698, of which 1,270, i.e., about 10 per cent, had Bilhar- 

 ziosis. These cases represent only persons " suffering from patho- 

 logical destruction of kidneys, ureters, bladder, urethra, and rectum, 

 produced by severe and repeated bilharzial infections." Madden 

 adds, "the mortality from Bilharziosis j}e?- se or its immediate com- 

 plications was just over ten per cent ; but this hardly gives one 

 even an approximate idea of the real mortality, as many cases, 

 when they do not appear to be improving, are taken out of hospital 

 to die at home ; all such cases are entered as unrelieved, but had 

 they been left in hospital many of them would certainly soon have 

 been included in the mortality tables." Professor Ferguson found 

 that of a series of five hundred autopsies on male subjects eight 

 per cent of all cases died of the effects of severe bilharzial infection. 



In the course of the ankylostomiasis campaign during 1914-15 

 MacCallum obtained for the first time some exact and detailed 

 infmnation regarding the local incidence of vesical Bilharziosis in 

 the provinces of Qaliubia and Sharqia. These results have not yet 

 been published, but Dr. MacCallum very generously communicated 



