Oriental sore in Bagdad, together with observations on a gregarine in Stegomyia fasciata, the haemogregarine of dogs and the flagellates of house flies / by C.M. Wenyon.

  • Wenyon, C. M. (Charles Morley), 1878-1948.
Date:
1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Oriental sore in Bagdad, together with observations on a gregarine in Stegomyia fasciata, the haemogregarine of dogs and the flagellates of house flies / by C.M. Wenyon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    atmosphere seems to have a deleterious effect upon them. When the temperature is not so high the flies abound and are constantly swarming about the faces of the children and more especially those made attractive by the sore. Such flies collected from the face of a child suffering from an ulcerating type of sore are found to have the intestine filled with the exudation of the sore in which the parasites can readily be found. This was only to be expected, as any fly feeding on the sore is bound to take up large numbers of parasites. Such a fly feeding immediately afterwards upon some fresh abrasion of the skin must certainly in a number of instances inoculate the sore parasite. On carrying out the dissection of house-flies, one was not surprised to find that a certain percentage of these had an intestinal infection of Herpetomonas. In some instances these appeared to be Herpetomonas muscae domesticae ] in others there occurred a smaller flagellate, also of the Herpetomonas type. In a certain number of flies the malpighian tubes were infected with flagellates which were of the trypanosome type with the kinetonucleus on the non-flagellar side of nucleus. A description of these flagellates will be found in another section. Whether these various flagellates represent different stages of one parasite of the fly is a point difficult to settle, unless one undertakes special experimental work to this end. The smaller forms of herpeto- mones from their resemblance to the cultural forms of the Leishman- Donovan bodies might readily be taken for similar developmental forms in the gut of the fly. Judging from experiments conducted with house-flies it is improbable that the Herpetomonas are related to Leishmania. The intestine of the fly was filled with all kinds of debris intermingled with bacteria of many kinds. Stomoxys. From the time of my arrival in Bagdad in March till the hot weather had set in in June, these flies occurred in fair numbers, especially in the neighbourhood of the stables. They often settled upon one and were mistaken for house-flies till the pricking of the proboscis revealed their nature. They would frequently bite about the ankles, especially through dark socks. With the advent of the really hot weather these flies almost completely disappeared and could rarely be discovered even in the stables, their favourite haunt. The laboratory where these investigations were conducted was situated directly opposite a stable, and here during the cooler months it was an easy matter to capture forty or fifty of these flies in a very short time. During the hot months of July, August and September, a whole morning’s search would fail to yield a single specimen.