7 
A DESCRIPTION OF FOUR FILARIA LOA 
FROM THE SAME PATIENT. 
By O. V. HUFFMAN, M.D., 
AND wm b. wherry, M.D. 
{From the Laboratory of the Cincinnati Hospital, 
Cincinnati, Ohio, U.8.A.) 
(With Plate II.) 
A COMPARISON of the descriptions of the morphological characteristics 
of Filaria loa by previous authors shows differences which are explained 
by the study of our uninjured specimens. We have prepared a 
table (q.v.) which shows the re.sults of the work of various observers 
together with our own. We believ^that most of the drawings so far 
published are somewhat misleading; we’'hav6j therefore, drawn the 
essential parts as seen through the microscope with an entire diameter 
and a portion of a longitudinal section in focus. The drawings are not 
composite or schematic but have been made on a large scale with 
accuracy in the measurements so as to represent the different parts in 
proper proportion (see Plate). 
This species of Nematode was first described in 1777 as being 
different from the Guinea-worm by Guyot, a French naval surgeon, 
after he had made several voyages to the coast of Angola. He noted 
that these worms were very white, harder and shorter than the Guinea- 
worm. 
A number of cases of the removal of worms from the eyes of negroes 
in St Domingo, Cayenne and South America were reported, but it was 
not until 1838 that the next identification of this species was made 
when Guyon described a Filaria which had been removed from the eye 
of a negress on the Island Of Martinique and sent to him. He also, in 
