Miscellaneous. 



156 



[August, 1910. 



HOOKWORM-THE SCOURGE OF 

 THE SOUTH. 

 [ANKYLOSTOMIASIS.] 

 By P. Harvey Middlbton. 



(From the Good Health, May 1910.) 

 War has been declared against the 

 hookworm ! Under the generalship of 

 Charles Wardell Stiles, Chief of the 

 Division of Zoology of the Public Health 

 and Marine Hospital Service of the 

 United States — and the discoverer of 

 the parasite — the forces of hygiene and 

 science are being organised to wipe out 

 the scourge of the South, the tiny para- 

 site, no larger than a bit of sewing 

 thread, less than half an inch long, 

 which has already succeeded in afflicting 

 two million people with a dreadful and 

 chronic malady, has slaughtered thou- 

 sands of children, and has cost the 

 Southern States several hundred mil- 

 lions of dollars by effectually retarding 

 the development of agriculture and in- 

 dustry. Compared with this tiny enemy 

 the negro problem and tho boll-weevil 

 fade into utter insignificance. Ample 

 ammunition has been provided for the 

 fight by the million dollar donation of 

 John D. Roekfeller. 



Necator Americanus, the "American 

 murderer," is the name which has been 

 given to this devastating parasite, and 

 the disease which it causes has been 

 variously termed "dirt-eating," " negro- 

 consumption," "malnutrition." 'mal- 

 d'estomac," " malarial anemia," while it is 

 known to medical men as Uncinariasis. 

 Sufferers from it in the South are called 

 "poor white trash," " crackers," " clay- 

 eaters," "dirt-eaters," and as many con- 

 temptible epithets as an indifferent 

 public and a flexible English can devise. 

 Sometimes only one member of a family 

 is afflicted, sometimes two, sometimes 

 a whole family. In places almost entire 

 communities are infested. 



These "poor whites" are all native 

 born American white people, many of 

 them of the purest strains of Anglo- 

 Saxon stock, and it seems the irony of 

 fate that these men and women, whose 

 ancestors were the flower of the race, 

 should have been brought to their low 

 estate by the unclean habits of the 

 negroes, formerly their slaves, who 

 brought the hookworm with them from 

 Africa on the slave ships. For this 

 worm, which has been called the " Vam- 

 pire of the South," comes into being 

 through the pollution of the soil by the 

 coloured population in rural districts 

 unprovided with sanitary conveniences. 



In the census of 366 sand-land farms, 

 taken by Dr. Stiles, forty-three per cent, 

 of the whites and seventy-nine per 

 cent, of the negroes were without any 

 kind of sanitary convenience. The 

 negro has the parasites, even as the 

 whites, but he suffers comparatively 

 little inconvenience from them, and will 

 carry about with him a number of hook- 

 worms that would lay a white man in 

 his bed and a white child in his grave. 

 This, then, is the price of slavery which 

 must be paid by the descendants of the 

 slave owners, for wherever the whites 

 have followed the negro on plantations 

 that he tilled in slave days, anemia 

 with symptoms of the hookworm disease 

 has broken out among them. 



Take the case of a country school in 

 the South. The soil in its neighbour- 

 hood is fairly alive with the parasites. 

 Children run about over the infected 

 ground with bare feet and the hook- 

 worm'attack them. In boring through 

 the skin of the feet they set up a good 

 deal of irritation which (in ignorance of 

 the cause) is commonly spoken of as 

 " ground itch," " foot sore," " dew itch," 

 " dew poison," etc. It is quite generally 

 believed that the wearing of shoes will 

 prevent ground itch and thus reduce 

 hookworm disease. But to shoe all the 

 persons who now customarily go bare- 

 footed in the South, including all the 

 little black pickaninnies, Avould require 

 more than ten million pairs of shoes — 

 a huge undertaking even for a Rocke- 

 feller. 



It was only six years ago that the 

 hookworm parasite was first discovered 

 on the American continent. But during 

 these six years it has attracted wide- 

 spread attention, for it has been found 

 that in some sections of the South one- 

 third of the children are infected. There 

 are several kinds of hookworms. There 

 is a kind affecting the dog, and in some 

 parts of the country it kills twenty-five 

 to forty per cent, of all pups born. 

 There is a disease of cats known a? 

 typhoid fever which is due to hookworm 

 of the cat ; another kind infects foxes. 

 A aertain kind of hookworm infest3 

 sheep and has been known to kill 

 twenty-five to fifty per cent, of an entire 

 flock. Hookworms have been found 

 infecting the cattle of Florida, In 

 Alaska a certain hookworm infests the 

 seals, and it has been estimated that as 

 high as seventy per cent, of seal pups 

 die from hookworms. So you see man 

 is not the only animal that suffers from 

 this blood thirsty parasite. 



But it is with the New World hook- 

 worm, or " American murderer " that 

 we have to deal, For many years doc- 



