378 
RECENT PROGRESS IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF 
PARASITIC WORMS AND THEIR RELATION TO 
THE PUBLIC HEALTH. 
By WILLIAM NICOLL, M.A., D.Sc., M.D., D.P.H. 
(London School of Tropical Medicine.) 
Ten years ago I made an attempt to summarize briefly the advances which 
had been made in our knowledge of parasitic worms during the preceding few 
years. The interval has witnessed much upheaval and interruption of scientific 
labour, but nevertheless a very considerable amount of work on the subject 
has been accomplished. The nature of this does not appear to have been 
influenced to any exceptional extent by the war. 
During this period a terse but useful summary of the more outstanding 
recent parasitological work has been published by Faust who deals with the 
subject mainly from its zoological aspect; while the chief publications of 
medical interest have been succinctly reviewed by Leiper. In the following 
notes I propose to deal with the subject in somewhat greater detail particu¬ 
larly in its relation to the public health. 
One might have anticipated that in a country such as France the pre¬ 
paration and publication of scientific papers would have been grievously 
hampered by war conditions but that was certainly far from being the case, 
for French workers, indeed, are excelled only by British and Americans in i 
the quantity and quality of their output of helminthological literature. 
Russia and Germany are, as might have been expected, a considerable dis¬ 
tance behind, while the only other countries in which any outstanding work 
on parasitic worms has been done are Brazil and Japan. 
Britain has certainly been fortunate in possessing such workers as Leiper, 
Beddard, Baylis, Boulenger, Clayton Lane (India) and T. H. and S. J.l 
Johnston (Australia), but there has been until quite recently a comparative 
dearth of younger helminthologists. America has been much better supplied 
in this respect for, in addition to men of such well-established reputation 
as Cort, Hall, Ransom and Faust, others such as Van Cleave, Cooper, G. A. 
MacCallum and Larue have produced work of a high order. 
The Frenchmen who, in my opinion, have contributed most largely to the 
science of helminthology have been Seurat, Deve, Railliet, Henry and, as a t 
physiologist, Faure-Fremiet. The Russians who appear to have done most 
useful work are Skrjabin and Cholodkowski, while Germany has been most ' 
ably represented by Flilleborn, Martini and Fibiger. Travassos in Brazil and 
Yoshida in Japan complete the list of the most outstanding names. This list, I 
