824 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
blood to the right side of the heart and the pulmonary artery to 
the lungs. Here the larvae made their way out into the air-spaces 
of the lung, travelled up the bronchi, and wriggled up the wind- 
pipe. Then reaching the entrance of the gullet," they passed down 
it into the stomach, and thence made their way into the intestine, 
where they became fully-developed worms. In twenty-one days 
after the experimental infection of a dog, the ova of the ankylo- 
stoma can be found in its faeces. I regard Looss’ discovery as 
a very important contribution to scientific medicine. 
Causes of the anctmia . — Those who believe in the blood- 
sucking propensities of the worm attribute the anaemia not 
so much to the abstraction of the red blood globules as to the 
removal of the plasma. Lassano, in 1890, by injecting under 
the skin of a rabbit an extract obtained from the urine of a 
patient who was suffering from ankylostomiasis, succeeded in 
producing a profound anaemia. He therefore propounded the 
theory of poisoning by toxins secreted by the worms as the cause 
of the anaemia. Others have also obtained blood-changes by the 
injection of watery extracts of the ankylostomes. By means of such 
extract made for me by Messrs Brady and Martin, of Newcastle, I 
have succeeded in inducing anaemia and leucocytosis in rabbits. 
Looss of Cairo, Herman of Mons, Malvoz, and Lambinet of Liege are 
in favour of the view that the ankylostoma forms a toxin which has 
a destructive effect upon the red blood corpuscles and a dissolving 
influence upon their colouring matter. The toxins that are found 
are probably secreted by the glands in the neighbourhood of the 
mouth and oesophagus. It is thought that during the act of 
abstraction of blood some secretion is thrown out which prevents 
the blood from coagulating; and on the other hand, that this is 
absorbed by the blood-vessels of the host, and causes toxaemia. 
In favour of the loss-of-blood theory is the important fact an- 
nounced by Professor Stockman, of Glasgow, viz., that in the 
liver and spleen of five persons who had died of ankylostomiasis 
in Fiji and Ceylon he found a marked absence of iron — a circum- 
stance which points to an actual loss of blood rather than to 
destruction of it. 
Lambinet has just been carrying out a series of experiments on 
dogs — ending in the production of acute ankylostomiasis. In the 
