resemble polypoid growths, and are apt to be mistaken for piles. They may extend as high up the bowel as the sigmoid flexure. On tearing up one of these growths the ova can be seen in the débris.
The eggs of S. mansoni may be found in great numbers in the liver, giving rise to a peculiar form of cirrhosis. They occur, too, in the lungs and other organs.
SCHISTOSOMUM JAPONICUM (Katsurada, 1904)
(Plate XIV.)
Synonym.—Schistosomum cattoi, Blanchard.
History.— For some years Japanese physicians had observed in the provinces of Yamanashi and Hiroshima in Central Japan, and at Saga in the North Island, an endemic disease characterized by enlargement of the liver and spleen, cachexia, and ascites. The patients suffered from diarrhœa, their motions containing mucus tinged with blood. Occasionally they had fever. They became anæmic, and many of them died from exhaustion. At the autopsy the liver and other organs were found to contain the ova of some unknown helminth.*[1] In April, 1904, Katsurada discovered that the eggs found in the stools of these patients contained a ciliated embryo not unlike the miracidium of Schistosomum hæmatobium. Disappointed of an autopsy, he examined dogs and cats in the endemic area, and had the good fortune to find at once in the portal system of two cats from the province of Yamanashi numerous schistosomidæ containing eggs exactly similar to those previously found in man. He published this information on August 13th, 1904, and named the new trematode S. japonicum. Almost simultaneously, and independently, Fujinami observed cases of the disease in the village of Katayama, in the province of Bingo, and found in his first fatal case the characteristic ova in various
- ↑ * As far back as 1888, Majima, in Tokio, found peculiar ova in the liver of a case of cirrhosis. These he described as the ova of an unknown parasite. In 1890, in a similar case, Yamagiwa found ova which he ascribed to the lung trematode.
