HOOKWORM DISEASE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXI, Issue 9699, 2 November 1909, Page 6

HOOKWORM DISEASE.

"THE MICROBE OF LAZINESS."

It was announced by cable on Saturday that Mr John D. Rockfeller had given 1,000.000 dollars (£200,000) for the purpose of a commission of doctors who are investigating the hookworm disease, prevalent in the rural districts of the Southern States. The Commission states that two million persons of all classes are infected. The disease, technically known as uncinariasis, is a peculiar oue, and characterised by a languor and loss of energy resulting from the twofold cause" of anaemia aud the specific poison of the parasite. Standard books ou helminthology will throw no light on the subject, tor there was no systematic investigation till 1903, when the clue was found. Degeneracy and demoralisation is caused by the "parasite, affecting some two millions of white people in the Southern States. "Hookworm" is a translation of "Haakenwurm" given to an allied parasite found in the intestine of a fox in 1789 by Goeze, a German zoologist, who gave the genus the name it still bears, Uncinaria, from uucinus—a hook. This was not the first discovery of the genus, for seveu years' earlier a clergyman had found another species, which he called Haarruudwurm (hair-rouud-worm). But the term "Hookworm" holds the field, though the ray-like processes of the tail are not really hooks, but merely serve when extended as supports. The worm is a small threadlike creature less than an luch long, iufestiug the intestines. It fixes itself to tho membranes and sometimes burrows depiy iuto the flesh, sucking blood like a leech, and causing auaemia not ouly by its voracity but by the persistent bleeding from the wound it leaves. Tlie drain ou tiie vital fluid destroys energy aud initiative aud leads to general physical decline and imbecility, so that the degenerate "poor whites" of the South are a by-word in the United States. Six years ago, when the parasite aud its effects were reported, the newspapers made very merry over the discovery of "the microbe of laziness," "but Dr Stiles had seeu emaciated men trying to wrest a living from half-tilled fields, aud women, to whom rest never came, tryiug to nurse starveling babes at withered breasts; and at- last, m an address, the words were wrung from the man's heart. 'It isn't a thing to laugh at when womeu and children are dying.'" The female worm produces thousands of eggs, not oue of which cau develop in the human body, but the excreta pollute tiie soil, and the minute larva lias a horrible facility of penetrating the skin by way of the pores aud hair-follicles, leaving its sheath behind. Thence it finds its wav into the capillaries, and thence to the luugs, and by devious routes to the intestines, where it fixes itself aud undergoes its final stage of development. There are Europeau species long since described, infesting animals and men; but the life history of the group has only recently been traced. Men who handle earth, children who go barefoot or sit uu the bare ground, are liable to repeated iufection. and through neglect of sanitation whole regions are poisoned. Mauy of the public schools are centres of infection. From the time of the larva entering the skin to reaching its final destination is seventy-one days, aud all this time there is constitutional disturbance, with severe debility aud anaemia. The negro, who originally brought the germ to the country, is immune to this extent, that though he may be badly infested and a centre of infection to others, he does not suffer the disastrous constitutional effects that afflict the white mau. Of late years, the- profession has taken up the WF.r against uncinariasis as "the crusade of the century," aud the opportune discovery that thymol, carefully administered, is a specific, has given much encouragement. But the reluctance of the sufferers (who, for the most part, attribute their trouble to witchcraft) to submit to treatment, proves a great obstacle. By the way, earth-eating is a characteristic symptom of the disease in young and old, and the complaint has often been erroneously ascribed to the habit. The species infesting the Southern States is called Necafcor Americauus. The generic name is significant—"murderer. ''