THE PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF AMOEBIC ABSCESS 



OF THE LIVER. 1 



By Leonard Rogeiss.- 



During the last few years much progress has been made in our 

 knowledge of the pathology of tropical liver abscess, in which the workers 

 in the Philippine Islands have played a noteworthy part. Nevertheless, 

 I venture to hope that, owing to the abundance of opportunities for 

 investigating this subject in Calcutta, my experience of the last ten years' 

 work there may not be without interest, more esvecially with regard to 

 the practical points of the prevention and treatment of the disease based 

 on advancing knowledge regarding its etiology. 



RELATIONSHIP OF TROPICAL LIVER ABSCESS TO AMCEBIC DYSENTERY. 



As recently as 1902, the opener of a debate on dysentery at the British 

 Medical Association 3 maintained that tropical liver abscess was. not 

 closely related to dysentery. At the same meeting I brought forward 

 the results of investigations in Calcutta on this point, in a series of cases 

 in which both clinical histories and post-mortem records were available, 

 with the following results : 



Relationship of dysentery to tropical liver abscess. 



Total. Per cent. 



Clinical and post-mortem evidence of dysentery 35 55.5 1 



No history, but post-mortem evidence of dysentery 13 20.63 J ' (90.48 



History, but no post-mortem evidence of dysentery 9 14.3 



No history or post-mortem evidence of dysentery 6 9.52 



The above cases include a number of old records dating back to 1872, 

 when the relationship of the two diseases was less well known, so dysentery 

 may not always have been sought for and recorded. If we take the more 

 recent post-mortem records of the last ten years, a considerable majority 

 of which have been performed by me, we obtain the following figures. 



1 Received for the first biennial meeting of the Far Eastern Association of 

 Tropical Medicine, held at Manila March 5-14, 1910, after the close of the sessions. 

 - Professor of pathology, Medical College, Calcutta. 

 3 Brit. Med. Journ. (1902), 2, 841. 



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