72 EDITORIAL. 



information concerning the actual percentage of Filipinos infected with 

 animal parasites, the Bureau of Science is at present tabulating the 

 results of the examination of over 4,000 men from the different prov- 

 inces. While the tabulation is not completed, it has been carried suf- 

 ficiently far to indicate with fair certainty than not less than 80 per 

 cent of the popvdation of the Islands is infected with one or more 

 species of intestinal worms and that if we consider the different species 

 separately, there is an average of about 200 infections to each 100 of 

 population. 



The most comprehensive statistics regarding the prevalence of intes- 

 tinal worms in tropical countries are those of Dobson and of Fearnside in 

 India, and of the Porto Eican Anaemia Commission. The latter re- 

 ported about 90 per cent of the population infected and the number of 

 infections with all intestinal worms to be about 140 to each 100 of tlie 

 population. Fearnside and Dobson each found about 100 infections to 

 100 people in India. 



The relative frequency of different species in the Philippines is not 

 yet definitely determined, further than that hookworms, Ascaris and 

 Trichuris, are the most prevalent forms and that the first probably 

 infect from 50 to 60 per cent of the total native population. In certain 

 provinces, the ratio of hookworm infection is undoubtedly much higher. 



One peculiarity presented by the situation is the fact that while this 

 high proportion of the population shows hookworm infection, severe 

 clinical manifestations of uncinariasis are comparatively rare. While 

 hundreds of cases come annually from the provinces to the hospitals of 

 Manila, exceedingly few, in the absence of malaria and other anaemia- 

 producing diseases, present even mild anaemia, and the infection is dis- 

 covered in the course of the usual routine stool examinations. Further- 

 more, careful inquiry among medical men of the Army, Navy,' Bureau 

 of Health, and Constabulary, who have served in the provinces, has 

 failed to elicit reports of any remarkable prevalence of anaemia among 

 the people. 



Whether or not the explanation of this apparent rarity of clinical 

 symptoms in hookworm infections among the Filipinos is a racial im- 

 munity on the part of the people to the toxins secreted by the worms, 

 as has been suggested as the cause of a very similar rarity of symptoms 

 found in negroes, by Stiles in the Southern States and by the Anaemia 

 Commission in Porto Rico, the fact that -severe clinical manifestations 

 of uncinariasis are rare in the Philippines materially alters the problem 

 which is presented. Instead of producing an acute condition demand- 

 ing prompt and radical measures, such as were adopted in Porto Rico, 

 St. Gothard's tunnel, the Westphalian coal mines, and other places where 

 uncinariasis prevailed in its severer forms, it would appear that in the 



