MAP-CHANGING MEDICINE 



The adult female worm, inhabiting the 

 small intestine, lays thousands of eggs 

 daily. After these pass out of the body 

 they hatch within one or two days. They 

 are microscopic in size when hatched and 

 never grow larger as long as they remain 

 in the ground. 



GETTING A "mOUTHHOLd" 



Then comes along a pair of bare feet 

 or hands, or some other part of the body 

 touches the infected ground, and the little 

 villains make the most of their oppor- 

 tunity. They promptly begin to bore their 

 way through the skin, causing a severe 

 irritation known as "ground itch." Once 

 under the skin, they travel through the 

 tissues until they come to the lymphatic 

 system, and thence into the blood. 



Finally, after passing through the 

 heart and lungs, they reach the throat 

 and pass thence through the stomach, 

 ultimately landing in the small intestine, 

 to whose wall they fasten themselves, and 

 for as much as seven years, if not dis- 

 turbed by treatment, take their fill of the 

 victim's blood and intestinal tissue. 



They develop in their salivary glands a 

 substance that has a marked power of in- 

 hibiting coagulation of the blood. At- 

 taching themselves to the surface of the 

 intestinal wall, rasping and sucking away 

 the delicate inner cells on which they 

 feed, they lay bare the deeper tissues, and 

 the wound continues to bleed for a long 

 time, even after the worm has deserted 

 the spot to which it was attached. 



But they go even further than that. By 

 some method not well understood, they 

 cause the blood to undergo a change, re- 

 ducing the amount of hemoglobin — the 

 element that makes us red-blooded, and 

 which constitutes the ingredient that tends 

 to render healthy blood an unfertile soil 

 for the seeds of infection sown there 

 through lack of sanitation. It has been 

 found that in severe cases of hookworm 

 infection as much as 90 per cent of the 

 red coloring matter of the blood is de- 

 stroyed, and that the number of red cor- 

 puscles — the hod-carriers of the human 

 system — may be cut down 50 per cent. 



MASTERING THE MALARIA GERM 



Even more insidious than the hook- 

 worm, and not so dramatically eradicable, 

 is the microscopic animal that causes ma- 



EOND OE CASTOR OIE 



One of the dispensers in Ceylon administer- 

 ing a dose of castor oil before giving oil of 

 chenopodium, in the treatment for hookworm 

 infection. This photograph was labeled "A 

 Thirsty Soul." Many of the natives are par- 

 ticularly fond of castor oil. 



laria. In the language of the lamented 

 Osier, "cholera kills its thousands ; plague, 

 in its bad years, its hundreds of thou- 

 sands ; yellow fever, hookworm disease, 

 pneumonia, and tuberculosis are all terri- 

 bly destructive, some only in the tropics, 

 others in more temperate regions as well ; 

 but malaria is to-day, as it were, a disease 

 to which the word pandemic is applicable. 

 In this country and in Europe its ravages 

 have lessened enormously during the past 

 century, but in the tropics it is everywhere 

 present, the greatest single foe of the 

 white man." 



