dwelling than they had heretofore: passing middle life their work 
would become less laborious and bring them less in actual contact 
with the soil, but it still would take them awav from the vicinitv of 
t «. 
the buildings. 
In view of the above facts we should expect that in rural districts 
males over 15 years old would tend to show a decrease in the amo un t 
of helminthiasis as age increased, while females above that age might 
be expected to show an increase in the number of their infections, at 
least up to such advanced age as would cause them to give up the 
work about the yard and garden, so frequently done by women on 
farms and in small towns, and confine themselves strictly to indoor 
duties. As above stated, both males and females would give their 
highest rates of infection among those under 15 vears of age. owing to 
the conditions both of environment and of physiological predisposition. 
The only cases examined by us which gave a history of rural life 
under normal conditions are a part of those admitted to the Connecti- 
cut hospital. It was impossible, from obtainable data, to strictly 
separate among these cases all those having histories of rural and of 
urban life. but. as shown elsewhere (see p. 48), the great majority of 
infections occurred among the former class. It is notable, therefore, 
that in the Connecticut cases, among whom appeared residents of 
country districts, the rate of infection among males in the different 
age groups progressively decreased from the yotmgest (15 to 30 to 
the oldest (over 50 years . while among the females the rate of infec- 
tion increased with advancing age from the second group (15 to 30 
years of age to the third group (31-50 yeai^ of age and fell slightly 
in the last group i above 50 years'. 
If we had statistics for persons of rural life in Connecticut under 15 
years of age. we should, accordingly, expect them to show, for both 
males and females, a still higher rate of infection than appears in 
any of the above groups. 
Among the white patients at the Government hospital, none of 
whom presented a clear history of normal rural life, the rate of infec- 
tion among both males and females shows a tendencv to decrease with 
advancing age. 
In connection with the very interesting age statistics given by 
Ashford. King, and Gutierrez (1904, 53 for hookworm diseases in 
Porto Rico, it may be pointed out that their figures refer to the pro- 
portion of their patients at given ages and not the proportion of the 
infected to the noninfected of anv given age on the island. Thus, 
when they report only 35 cases for children under 5 years and 1.027 
cases for the ages 10 to 14 years, this should not be interpreted as 
meaning that a person between 10 and 14 years is 29.9 times as liable 
to infection as a child under 5 years, but rather that a child of less 
than 5 vears is not so likelv to visit the clinic as is one of 10 to 14 vears. 
