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EECENT QUESTIONING OF THE TRANSMISSION OF VERRUGA. 



BY PHLEBOTOMUS. 



By Charles H. T. Townsend, 

 Bureau of Entomology, U.S. Department of Agriculture. 



Inasmuch as Phlebotomus verrucarum, Towns., has been seriously questioned as the 

 vective agent of verruga in an important memoir recently issued,* the WTiter feels 

 it incumbent upon him to answer the objections raised, as well as to reply to the 

 various speculations put forward in the same work relating to the subject of the 

 insect transmission of the disease. 



Taking the points in order of pagination, we find first that the writer's experiment 

 XV on a hairless dog is cited by the authors of the memoir and the statement is 

 made that eruptive papules seen by them in this dog were not verruga (pp. 155-7). 

 By abrasion these lesions became secondarily infected and dried over, and it was 

 this condition that the authors saw. A papule excised on 22nd August 1913 from 

 the same area showed verruga structure on sectioning. A smear from the papule 

 of 19th July 1913 showed " a considerable number of bodies bearing a certain 

 resemblance to Leishmania, but lacking the kinetonucleus and manifestly not that 

 organism. I have found the same type of bodies in the Phlebotomus " (quoted 

 from the writer's article reproduced by the authors — p. 156). The bodies from 

 the papule were apparently early schizonts of the Bartonella,'f identified by the 

 writer at the time with the Leishmania-\ike bodies announced by Gastiaburii and 

 Rebagliati in 1912. The bodies of similar type from the Phlebotomus were probably 

 ookinetes, a fuller study of which is planned by the writer. Especial attention is 

 called to the subsequent history of this experiment, which is significant, immunity 

 having been conferred by the "Phlebotorrms-injections causing the disease^ 



The case of Mr. Nicholson, due to Phlebotomus infection, is cited and attention 

 called to the period of 39 days between the lapse of the fever and the inception of 

 the eruption (p. 158). Note the already published statements on this case,§ including 

 the fact that Mr. Nicholson did not enter the verruga zone during this period. Both 

 the fever and the eruption must be traced to the Phlebotomus bites of 17th Sept. 

 1913. 



The writer's experiment in McGuire is referred to (p. 159). Supplementary data 

 on this case have recently been published.^ The authors quote from the writer's 

 first article : " The blood showed . . . the sparse presence of bodies which the 

 writer identifies as Bartonia.^^ These bodies, as shown in McGuire's smears, are 



* Strong, Tyzzer, Sellards, Brues & Gastiaburii. — Kept. First Exp. S. Amer., Harvard 

 Sch. Trop. Med. (Cambridge, Mass.), pp. 5-174 (1915). 

 t Jl. Washington Acad. Sci., v, no. 21 (1915). 

 t Jl. Econ. Ent., vii, p. 360 (1914). 

 § Ent. News, xxv, no. 40, pp. 131-2 (1914). 

 ^ Am. Jl. Trop. Dis. Prev. Med., iii, p. 26 (1915). 

 (C221) O 



