21 



CHAPTER III. EEGENT EEPORTS ON THE OCOUR- 

 RENCE OE INTESTINAL PROTOZOA IN THE POPU- 

 LATION OF BRITAIN. 



In this chapter I propose to set out the recent records of the 

 occurrence of intestinal protozoa in the British population. The 

 greater part of the chapter will consist of the new reports — now 

 published for the first time — from the investigators working at 

 Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield, and Reading. 

 Reference to these investigations has already been made in the 

 Introduction (p. 12). As there noted, they were undertaken, 

 under the direction of the War Office Committee on Dysentery, in 

 order to amplify the observations of the workers at Liverpool. 

 It thus seems proper to preface them with some account of the 

 Liverpool workers' results, which have now been fully published. 

 I shall therefore begin by giving a brief summary of this pioneer 

 work, before passing on to the later records. 



I may note here that there are, in addition to the reports 

 given in this chapter, three other recently published records of 

 the occurrence of U. histolytica in persons who have never been 

 abroad. (1) Baylis (1919, 1920), as already noted, found 10 men 

 infected among 400 naval cases at Haslar ; and of these 8 had never 

 left the British Isles. (2) MissD. L. Mackinnon (1918) examined 

 34 ' British ' cases among patients at University War Hospital, 

 Southampton, and found one K histolytica intection. in a, ma.n who 

 had never been abroad.^ (3) Tayler has recorded an infection 

 with E. histolytica in 'one man who has never been out of England', 

 examined at Addington Park War Hospital, Croydon. It is 

 stated that he ' probably contracted the infection while employed 

 unloading transports at Southampton Docks ', but the evidence 

 for this conclusion is not given. (See Turner and Tayler (1919), 

 p. 249, footnote.) All these cases are of interest, in that they 

 supply further information concerning the occurrence of U. his- 

 tolytica in Britain ; but as other essential particulars are not 

 available, I have not been able to include them with the other 

 results recorded in this chapter. 



A. The Liverpool Reports. 



Four years ago Smith and Matthews (1916) recorded — appa- 

 rently for the first time— the occurrence of Giardia intestinalis 

 ( = Lamblia) in two men who hadnever been outof England. Later, 

 in collaboration with others (Yorke, Carter, Mackinnon, Matthews, 

 and Smith, 1917), they reported the presence of Entamoeba 

 histolytica, E. coli, and Chilomastix mesnili also, found during the 

 examination of a series of 344 persons who had never been 



' This man was 'an R.A.M.C. sergeant who had attended to dysentery patients 

 on hospital trains'. The other infections found in this series were with E. coli (5), 

 E. nana (3), Giardia (6), and Chilomastix (1). 

 (4131) A 7 



