350 EDITORIAL. 



During the interval of years from 1899 to 1903 the fear of amoebic 

 dysentery in the American Army of occupation was so great that one 

 amoeba observed in a specimen of the stools of an officer or enlisted man 

 was followed by an order for immediate transfer for treatment to the 

 United States, where physicians knew even less about the disease than 

 they did here, although the first two years of our occupation represented 

 a period when every man was needed and no soldier was allowed to 

 leave the Islands unless medical officers decided a return to be necessary 

 in order to save life. Amoebic disease was regarded at that time as 

 being practically incurable. That this was so is shown by a study of 

 our best text-books of that period in which, although little space was 

 devoted to the malady, a most gloomy picture of ten to twelve weeks' 

 duration of the infection was drawn and the tendency to relapses and, 

 resulting chronicity and abscess of the liver was mentioned as the common 

 sequence. 1 Thanks to the studies made of this disease and the rational 

 methods in its treatment b] r Strong, Musgrave and Clegg and to the 

 dissemination of knowledge, particularly among the laity, of the cause, 

 methods of infections, prophylaxis, and curability of the infection, amoe- 

 biasis is now recognized at the onset even by the laity themselves, with 

 the result that nowadays few amoebic patients lose any time from their 

 duties. An intelligent person can learn in a few lessons how to take the 

 necessary colonic injections, and taking a diet as heavy and stimulating 

 as the digestive system can care for, instead of the starvation treatment, 

 only periodical examinations of the stools can convince him that he 

 still harbors amoebae. Much of the general confidence in the profession's 

 ability to cure the great majority of cases is strengthened by the fact 

 that we now know that a considerable number of bowel disturbances due 

 to amoebae are mild in nature and recover with little and often with no 

 treatment whatever. 



The result of all this, as far as the liver abscess complication is 

 concerned, is that this complication is now encountered only in neglected 

 or improperly treated cases. Of course, a few generations will pass 

 before the peoples of temperate climes will lose the widespread fear of 

 abscess of the liver which they associate with a residence in the tropics. 



A number of our colleagues in Far Eastern countries have given 

 statistical reports which are of interest in this connection. Sir 

 Allan Perry, principal medical officer of Colombo, Ceylon, sends us the 

 following : 



'Osier (1897). 



