lo Henry B. Ward 



merous parasites as separate cases of the disease. I have departed 

 from this rule twice where the time interval was such as to jus- 

 tify the acceptance of the later record as a new case. So far as 

 possible each case record includes the name, date, and place of 

 observation, the sex, age, and nationality of the person infected, 

 the number and sex of the worms, a statement regarding their 

 removal, if accomplished, and the probable place and time of 

 infection, and finally the place and date of publication. In some 

 cases only a limited amount of data are given by the original 

 recorder, and in many instances certain of these desiderata are 

 lacking. 



By no means all of the cases of which we have reasonably 

 good information are included in the list, since some of the 

 records, though distinct, are not definite enough to enumerate 

 exactly in such a series. Thus Guyot (1805) speaks of several 

 other individuals, on the coast of Angola ; Wilson's patient says 

 (Wilson, 1890) the disease is common among natives, and all 

 the missionaries of that station, Benita near Gaboon, have them; 

 Robertson's patient had seen such cases in the eyes of natives; 

 Roth (1896) says his patient informed him that a number of 

 people in her village complained of the same disease ; while Miss 

 Kingsley, the well-known African traveler, speaks of these filariae 

 as abundant and fairly common in dififerent regions on the West 

 Coast of Africa. Such evidence might be multiplied concerning 

 this part of the w^orld. 



Not all cases are equally clearly established. I have followed 

 the general custom of previous authors in including cases in 

 which the identity of the parasite has not been finally demon- 

 strated. Indeed, were one to demand precise identification all 

 the earlier cases and many of the later ones must be thrown 

 out. Again, other species have been reported from the eye of 

 man and some of those doubtfully attributed to F. loa in this list 

 may belong to such species. In such cases the geographical lo- 

 cation of the case or the past record of the infected person are 

 of importance in determining the probable species of Filar ia rep- 

 resented. Even thus no case has been included in this list except 

 the weight of evidence was strongly in favor of the interpreta- 



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