50 Philippine Journal of Science 1920 
Pantin reports an incidence of 100 per cent Ascans infections 
in Kien Province, China. She describes a “wormy” cough that 
•is not uncommon in the more heavily infected. She has noted, 
further, that bronchitis in children is cured by doses of santonin 
and aperients without the use of expectorants. If such a con- 
nection could be established it would appear to indicate that 
this was not due to the migration of the larvae through the 
lungs, for it is scarcely to be expected that this treatment would 
be effective in the lung stages. 
Ransom and Foster, (48) in an exceedingly readable paper 
written shortly before the untimely death of Foster, have sum- 
marized the present knowledge of the life history of Ascaris. 
In the course of this paper (p. 98), they say: 
* * * In addition to the likelihood that Ascaris infection will be 
found to be responsible for certain lung troubles in human beings, par- 
ticularly in children, it is quite likely that Ascaris has something to do 
with many of the cases of lung disease in pigs. Large numbers of 
young pigs suffer and die from lung affections the causes of which have 
never been satisfactorily explained. The symptoms shown by the experi- 
mentally infected pigs at the time of the invasion of the lungs by the 
larvae are frequently exactly similar to those exhibited by pigs suffering 
from so-called “thumps,” a popular name for a serious condition of very 
common occurrence among pigs, and it is accordingly not improbable that 
Ascaris is an important factor in the production of “thumps,” especially 
when it is considered how very commonly Ascaris occurs as a parasite 
of pigs. Though we can not yet form a true estimate of the actual impor- 
tance of Ascaris as a cause of lung disease it is evident that this parasite 
has capacities for harm not formerly suspected. Stewart’s very inter- 
esting discovery of the migration of the larvae through the lungs has 
therefore not only added materially to our knowledge of the life history 
of Ascaris, but also by opening up a new line of investigation in pathology 
is likely to lead to a better understanding of the cause, prevention and 
treatment of certain diseases of the lungs. 
Out of the one hundred children studied by us in this series, 
thirty-three were admitted to the hospital for treatment of 
diseases of the respiratory tract other than tuberculosis, in- 
fluenza, or pleurisy. The distribution of these cases is shovv^n 
in Table 22. 
Table 22 . — Respiratory diseases in the series. 
Cases. 
Bronchitis 
11 
Bronchopneumonia 
12 
Lobar pneumonia 
9 
Asthma 
1 
Total 
33 
Pantin, Mabel, Brit. Med. Joum. Sept. 14 (1918) 287. 
