Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T18:53:28.018Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Observations on Human Intestinal Protozoa in Malaya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2009

Margaret W. Jepps
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow. (Temporarily Protozoologist to the Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur, Federated Malay States.)

Extract

During the year April 1921–April 1922 I examined the stools of 1034 men from the dysentery ward of the District Hospital, Kuala Lumpur, in the Federated Malay States. In this hospital the patients are for the most part indigent Chinese and Tamils of the coolie class, who have resided in Malaya for a length of time varying from a few weeks to a number of years, sometimes all their lives. From the way in which these people live, from the intimate mixture of so many different nationalities, and from their often extensive migrations, one might be led to expect that their intestinal fauna would be abundant both in variety of species and in incidence of infection. This expectation is not realised in the following results. Indeed, the figures for some of the non-pathogenic protozoa are not as high as some which have been obtained for healthy Englishmen who have never left England (cf. Matthews and Malins Smith, 1919). Nearly all the patients in this series were suffering, or had recently suffered, from active dysentery at the time when the examinations were made: and in some cases the flushing out of the intestine from this cause probably reduced the intestinal protozoa to such small numbers that none could be found when specimens of the stools were examined. In many cases, also, protozoa have certainly been overlooked in the masses of pus and other cells present in a very large proportion of the stools examined. Had it been possible to examine a series of cases without intestinal derangements involving diarrhoea from the same population, some opinion might have been formed as to the actual effect of these two factors on the results obtained. And until some such figures are available for comparison it cannot be said that the scarcity of some of the intestinal protozoa found in these cases has any special significance.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1923

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Broughton-Alcock, W. and Thomson, J. G. (1922). Embadomonas intestinalis (Wenyon and O'Connor) 1917: description of the cysts and free forms found in a case in England. Proc. Roy. Soc. Med. XV, 4, Section of Tropical Diseases, &c., p. 8.Google Scholar
Darling, S. T., Barber, , Marshall, A. and Hacker, H. P. (1920). Hookworm and Malaria research in Malaya, Java, and the Fiji Islands. Report of the Uncinariasis Commission to the Orient, 1915–1917, Rockfeller Foundation.Google Scholar
Dobell, C. (1919). The amoebae living in man.Google Scholar
Dobell, C. (1922), in the Practice of Medicine in the Tropics, ed. Byam, and Archibald, , II, 1495.Google Scholar
Dobell, C. and O'connor, F. W. (1921). The intestinal protozoa of man.Google Scholar
Hogue, M. J. (1921). Waskia intestinalis: its cultivation and cyst formation. Journ. Amer. Med. Assoc. LXXVII, 112.Google Scholar
Jepps, M. W. (1921). Notes on the intestinal protozoa of 971 men at the University War Hospital, Southampton. Journ. Roy. Army Med. Corps, XXXVII, 366.Google Scholar
Kofoid, C. A., Kornhauser, S. I. and Plate, J. T. (1919). Intestinal parasites in overseas and home service troops of the U.S. Army. Journ. Amer. Med. Assoc. LXXII, 1921.Google Scholar
Matthews, J. R. and Malins, Smith A. (1919). The spread and incidence of intestinal protozoal infection in the population of Great Britain. Ann. Trop. Med. and Parasitol. XIII, i. 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenyon, C. M. (1921). Histological observations on the possible pathogenicity of Trichomonas intestinalis, etc. Journ. Trop. Med. and Hyg. XXIII, 125.Google Scholar
Wenyon, C. M. (1921). Cultivation of Embadomonas. Trans. Roy. Soc. Trop. Med. and Hyg. XV, 5 and 6, 154.Google Scholar
Wenyon, C. M. and O'connor, F. W. (1917). An enquiry into some problems affecting the spread and incidence of intestinal protozoal infections of British troops and natives in Egypt, etc. Journ. Roy. Army Med. Corps, XXVIII, 358.Google Scholar