Volume 2

Reports of the Sleeping Sickness Commission of the Royal Society.

  • Royal Society (Great Britain). Sleeping Sickness Commission
Date:
1903-19
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Reports of the Sleeping Sickness Commission of the Royal Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Appendix. FILARIA PERSIANS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO SLEEPING SICKNESS. By GEORGE C. LOW, M.A., M.B., CM. Following the instructions issued by the Royal Society, namely, that Sleeping Sickness might he a disease due to the nematode parasite Filaria persians, I took up this part of the work specially, and filially decided that there was no connection between the two. This hypothesis was first advanced by Sir Patrick ^lanson, who demonstrated the presence of this parasite in three cases of this disease which were brought to England, one under the care of Sir Stephen Mackenzie at the London Hospital, and two at Charing Cross Hospital. Having just returned from the West Indies and British Guiana, where I had been maldng a special study of the different forms of Filaria, I had the advantage of possessing a vast amomit of material bearing directly on this question before I started for Africa. On arriving in Uganda, the method adopted to determine whether Filaria persians could be incriminated in the production of Sleeping Sickness was to examine thousands of individuals' blood in different areas and to see if the parasite gave rise to any pathological changes. The special procedure was : (a) the examination of sick and sound in areas where Sleeping Sickness was rife; (b) the examination of people in areas where Sleeping Sickness had not appeared or had never l)een known ; and (c) pathological data. (A) Areas loith Sleeping Sickness. 1. Sese.—This, a group of islands in the lake, was chosen on account of its convenience, and on account of the large amount of the disejise present there. An examination of sixty-eight such cases showed that 66 or 97 per cent, had Filaria perstans, but against this, on the other hand, eighty-six individuals out of a hundred, carefully selected as free from Sleeping Sickness, also exhibited the same parasite in their blood, 2. Entebbe and Neighbourhood. An examination of fifty well-marked cases of Sleeping Siclaiess showed 45 or 90 per cent. M-ith Filaria
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