Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 3 (2).djvu/15

THOMAS'S CESOPHOGOSTOME. 53 Dr. Thomas said the case in question was only in the Hospital three days, and the patient was delirious the whole time. From the class of patient brought to the public wards they were seldom able to obtain any clinical data. The patients were generally brought in practically moribund and occupied the beds in the hospital only for a very few days, and thus did not give much oppor- tunity for the collection of data to work on. In this case there was certainly severe dysentery, as he had been told when passing through the ward by the doctor attending the case, and as the patient was beyond recovery he was left alone. In many of the cases which he had seen in sheep and goats there was certainly no diarrhoea.

As regards Brumpt's case in man there were no data at all, but he (Dr. Thomas) believed this case was supposed to have had slight dysentery. The physicians in the Amazon region probably seldohi made postmortem exam- inations, and they had not in consequence been able to tell him if this was the first case which has occurred. He did not think the condition was very common, or he would certainly have observed it amongst the numerous postmortems which had come under his notice during the period he was engaged in making his observations.

Dr. R. T. Leiper said he would like to congratulate Dr. Thomas very warmly on the case demonstrated. It seemed to him an exceedingly interesting contribution to tropical helminthology. The only case of CEsophagos- tomiasis previously recorded in man was of little patho- logical interest. No details of the lesions had been given and only six specimens, all immature, had been found. Dr. Thomas' patient on the other hand had apparently died of the intense infection.