CHAPTER XVI 



ANKYLOSTOMIASIS I DIRT CONTAMINATION 



ANKYLOSTOMIASIS 



This is a disease which, like so many of the others 

 which we have described in the preceding pages, teaches 

 a very instructive lesson. It is the disease par ex 

 cellence of workmen and labourers, which breaks out 

 frequently amongst them when they are working and 

 living under insanitary conditions, or rather, not under 

 strict sanitary discipline. Masses of men when left 

 to themselves, away from the intelligent eye of the 

 sanitary officer, revert to the primitive conditions of less 

 civilised nations, or to the condition of our ancestors. 

 In other words, they surely tend to contaminate their 

 surroundings, to " foul their nest," to pollute their 

 houses, villages, water supplies, etc. We know from 

 history how frequently this occurred in the movements 

 of armies in the Middle Ages. It was the frightful 

 mortality from these causes which brought into exist- 

 ence the study of hygiene. 



So with ankylostomiasis. This disease has been 

 known for a very considerable time under different 

 names. In Egypt there was a well-marked condition 



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