a disease to which in recent years much attention has been paid, from its prevalence in the mining industry in England, France, Germany, Belgium, North Queensland and elsewhere. This disease (apparently known in Egypt even in very ancient times) caused a great mortality among the negroes in the West Indies towards the end of the 18th century; and through descriptions sent from Brazil and various other tropical and sub-tropical regions, it was subsequently identified, chiefly through the labours of Bilharz and Griesinger in Egypt (1854), as being due to the presence in the intestine of nematoid worms (Ankylostoma duodenalis) from one-third to half an inch long. The symptoms, as first observed among the negroes, were pain in the stomach, capricious appetite, pica (or dirt-eating), obstinate constipation followed by diarrhoea, palpitations, small and unsteady pulse, coldness of the skin, pallor of the skin and mucous membranes, diminution of the secretions, loss of strength and, in cases running a fatal course, dysentery, haemorrhages and dropsies. The parasites, which cling to the intestinal mucous membrane, draw their nourishment from the blood-vessels of their host, and as they are found in hundreds in the body after death, the disorders of digestion, the increasing anaemia and the consequent dropsies and other cachectic symptoms are easily explained. The disease was first known in Europe among the Italian workmen employed on the St Gotthard tunnel. In 1896, though previously unreported in Germany, 107 cases were registered there, and the number rose to 295 in 1900, and 1030 in 1901. In England an outbreak at the Dolcoath mine, Cornwall, in 1902, led to an investigation for the home office by Dr Haldane F.R.S. (see especially the Parliamentary Paper, numbered Cd. 1843), and since then discussions and inquiries have been frequent. A committee of the British Association in 1904 issued a valuable report on the subject. After the Spanish-American War American physicians had also given it their attention, with valuable results; see Stiles (Hygienic Laboratory Bulletin, No. 10, Washington, 1903). The American parasite described by Stiles, and called Uncinaria americana (whence the name Uncinariasis for this disease) differs slightly from the Ankylostoma. The parasites thrive in an environment of dirt, and the main lines of precaution are those dictated by sanitary science. Malefern, santonine, thymol and other anthelmintic remedies are prescribed.
ANNA, BALDASARRE, a painter who flourished during part of the 16th and 17th centuries. He was born at Venice, probably about 1560, and is said to have been of Flemish descent. The date of his death is uncertain, but he seems to have been alive in 1639. For a number of years he studied under Leonardo Corona, and on the death of that painter completed several works left unfinished by him. His own activity seems to have been confined to the production of pieces for several of the churches and a few private houses in Venice, and the old guide-books and descriptions of the city notice a considerable number of paintings by him. Scarcely any of these, however, have survived.
ANNA (Hindustani ana), an Indian penny, the sixteenth part of a rupee. The term belongs to the Mahommedan monetary system (see Rupee). There is no coin of one anna, but there are half-annas of copper and two-anna pieces of silver. The term anna is frequently used to express a fraction. Thus an Anglo-Indian speaks of two annas of dark blood (an octoroon), a four-anna (quarter) crop, an eight-anna (half) gallop.
ANNA AMALIA (1739–1807), duchess of Saxe-Weimar, daughter of Charles I., duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was born at Wolfenbüttel on the 24th of October 1739, and married Ernest, duke of Saxe-Weimar, 1756. Her husband died in 1758, leaving her regent for their infant son, Charles Augustus. During the protracted minority she administered the affairs of the duchy with the greatest prudence, strengthening its resources and improving its position in spite of the troubles of the Seven Years’ War. She was a patroness of art and literature, and attracted to Weimar many of the most eminent men in Germany. Wieland was appointed tutor to her son; and the names of Herder, Goethe and Schiller shed an undying lustre on her court. In 1775 she retired into private life, her son having attained his majority. In 1788 she set out on a lengthened tour through Italy, accompanied by Goethe. She died on the 10th of April 1807. A memorial of the duchess is included in Goethe’s works under the title Zum Andenken der Fürstin Anna-Amalia.
See F. Bornhak, Anna Amalia Herzogin von Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (Berlin. 1892).
ANNABERG, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, in the Erzgebirge, 1894 ft. above the sea, 6 m. from the Bohemian frontier, 1812 m. S. by E. from Chemnitz by rail. Pop. (1905) 16,811. It has three Evangelical churches, among them that of St Anne, built 1499–1525, a Roman Catholic church, several public monuments, among them those of Luther, of the famous arithmetician Adam Riese, and of Barbara Uttmann. Annaberg, together with the neighbouring suburb, Buchholz, is the chief seat of the braid and lace-making industry in Germany, introduced here by Barbara Uttmann in 1561, and further developed by Belgian refugees, who, driven from their country by the duke of Alva, settled here in 1590. The mining industry, for which the town was formerly also famous and which embraced tin, silver and cobalt, has now ceased. Annaberg has technical schools for lace-making, commerce and agriculture, in addition to high grade public schools for boys and girls.
ANNABERGITE, a mineral consisting of a hydrous nickel arsenate, Ni3(AsO4)2 + 8H2O, crystallizing in the monoclinic system and isomorphous with vivianite and erythrite. Crystals are minute and capillary and rarely met with, the mineral occurring usually as soft earthy masses and encrustations. A fine apple-green colour is its characteristic feature. It was long known (since 1758) under the name nickel-ochre; the name annabergite was proposed by H. J. Brooke and W. H. Miller in 1852, from Annaberg in Saxony, one of the localities of the mineral. It occurs with ores of nickel, of which it is a product of alteration. A variety, from Creetown in Kirkcudbrightshire, in which a portion of the nickel is replaced by calcium, has been called dudgeonite, after P. Dudgeon, who found it. (L. J. S.)
ANNA COMNENA, daughter of the emperor Alexius I. Comnenus, the first woman historian, was born on the 1st of December 1083. She was her father’s favourite and was carefully trained in the study of poetry, science and Greek philosophy. But, though learned and studious, she was intriguing and ambitious, and ready to go to any lengths to gratify her longing for power. Having married an accomplished young nobleman, Nicephorus Bryennius, she united with the empress Irene in a vain attempt to prevail upon her father during his last illness to disinherit his son and give the crown to her husband. Still undeterred, she entered into a conspiracy to depose her brother after his accession; and when her husband refused to join in the enterprise, she exclaimed that “nature had mistaken their sexes, for he ought to have been the woman.” The plot being discovered, Anna forfeited her property and fortune, though, by the clemency of her brother, she escaped with her life. Shortly afterwards, she retired into a convent and employed her leisure in writing the Alexiad—a history, in Greek, of her father’s life and reign (1081–1118), supplementing the historical work of her husband. It is rather a family panegyric than a scientific history, in which the affection of the daughter and the vanity of the author stand out prominently. Trifling acts of her father are described at length in exaggerated terms, while little notice is taken of important constitutional matters. A determined opponent of the Latin church and an enthusiastic admirer of the Byzantine empire, Anna Comnena regards the Crusades as a danger both political and religious. Her models are Thucydides, Polybius and Xenophon, and her style exhibits the striving after Atticism characteristic of the period, with the result that the language is highly artificial. Her chronology especially is defective.
Editions in Bonn Corpus Scriptorum Hist. Byz., by J. Schopen and A. Reifferscheid (1839–1878), with Du Cange’s valuable commentary; and Teubner series, by A. Reifferscheid (1884). See also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (2nd ed. 1897); C. Neumann, Griechische Geschichtschreiber im 12 Jahrhunderte (1888); E. Oster, Anna Komnena (Rastatt, 1868–1871); Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 48; Finlay, Hist, of Greece, iii. pp. 53, 128 (1877); P. Adam, Princesses byzantines (1893); Sir Walter Scott, Count Robert of Paris; L. du Sommerard, Anne Comnène ... Agnès de France (1907); C. Diehl, Figures byzantines (1906).
