Gr. H. F. Nuttall 
83 
Tientsin, China; from Chinese pony (mixed with corporis, see p. 112), 
Szechuen, W. China; from Tamils, Malaya; from Persia; from natives, 
India. America : from Eskimos, Frobisher Bay, Baffinland (mixed 
with corporis) ; from natives, Mexico. 
Corporis: Africa : from Arabs and negro, Algeria; from negroes’ 
clothes, N. Nigeria ; from natives’ axilla, the hair of the head, blankets, 
and from tame pig, Nyasaland; from natives’ clothes, Kibondo, Belgian 
Congo. Asia : from man and pony, Szechuen, W. China; from man, 
Wai-Hai-Wai, China; from Japanese, Yokohama. America : from the 
United States; from natives, Mexico; from East Indian, Turkeyen, 
British Guiana. 
As it is desirable to obtain further information regarding the distri¬ 
bution and variation in human lice, I shall be much indebted to any 
reader who will kindly supply exact data, if possible accompanied by 
specimens of lice ( Phthirus pubis included) from different parts of the 
world. 
N.B. The names corporis (syn. vestimenti ) and capitis are used in 
a descriptive sense only in this paper, body-lice and clothes-lice being 
regarded as at most merely racial forms of the species Pediculus 
humanus Linnaeus, for reasons that will be stated elsewhere. 
Part I. 
PREVALENCE AND MODES OF DISSEMINATION. 
The Prevalence of Lice amongst the Poorer Classes. 
Under this heading, both Pediculus humanus and Phthirus pubis 
must be included because of the lack of classified statistics. Judging 
from memory of what I have seen in Mexico, and parts of Italy, and 
from random examinations made some years ago on a tour in Algeria, 
I am convinced that nowadays almost the whole poorer population 
in some countries is permanently infested with Pediculus. Historical 
evidence points to lousiness having been very general in all classes of 
European society in former times, but to-day it is largely confined to 
the poorer classes and to the soldiers in the field. 
Statistics regarding the prevalence of lice are only given in a few 
papers. Thus in the United States, Greenough (1888, cited by Blan¬ 
chard, 1890, p. 445) reports that of 15,551 patients admitted to hospital 
in Boston, Massachusetts, during the years 1878-1886, there were 
914 (5-5 %) found to be verminous. In other towns in the United 
States and Canada, 1-5 to 3-3 % of the patients were verminous. 
fi—2 
