276 
Oriental Sore 
have come to Bagdad from other districts in which the sore does not 
occur. Apparently the inhabitants of the smaller villages round Bag¬ 
dad and the nomad Arabs living in encampments, are not so liable to 
the disease as those who dwell in the town. When these people come 
to Bagdad to seek employment, the}' contract the disease and furnish 
a good proportion of the adult cases met with. Europeans almost 
invariably become infected within a year or two after their arrival 
though in rare cases they may escape the disease for years, if not 
entirely. 
All classes of the population are infected alike, and the child of the 
rich and well-to-do seems as liable to infection as the children brought 
up in the dii't and squalor of the most insanitary parts of the town. 
The children of the Europeans living in Bagdad generally suffer from 
the disease, and no matter what a person’s nationality, a sojourn in 
Bagdad of a very few months or even weeks, is liable to result in a 
Bagdad sore which will leave its mark in the shape of the permanent 
scar, known locally as the “date mark.” Such scars of varying size 
and extent are to be seen oh the faces of the greater part of the 
population. 
Seasonal prevalence of the disease. The sore may make its ap¬ 
pearance at any time of the year, but it is a well recognised fact that 
the autumn, the time of the ripening of the dates, at the close of the 
long spell of hot weather, is the season when the majority of sores first 
develop. It is this fact which has given rise to the local name of 
“ date boil ” and “ date mark” and to the hypothesis which attributes the 
sore to eating dates or even to injuries inflicted by the thorns of the 
date palms. The occurrence of the disease in early childhood does away 
with any such hypothesis. The month of September is the first month of 
the “date boil ” season, and during this month and the two succeeding 
months, the majority of new cases occur. The frequency of onset at 
this particular season must certainly depend on some parallel variation 
in the occurrence of some biting fly or infecting agent responsible for 
its transmission. It is quite common for the sore to make its appearance 
at some other time of the year, but such cases may be instances of pro¬ 
longed incubation period. It is evident that infection usually takes 
place during the hot months of June, July and August and with an 
incubation period of two to thi’ee months, the sore would appear, as it 
does, in the autumn. Cases are known where there is a much longer 
period of incubation, and the sores which develop at other seasons may 
be of this nature. It is possible that infection always takes place in 
