Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 2 (3).djvu/40

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times called by French writers houton du Caire, has some points of resemblance with Oriental sore, for it attacks newly-arrived residents during their first or second season of damp heat, and it sometimes seems to confer immunity from future trouble of this kind. It is followed by unsightly scars, and the boil can be repro- duced in a healthy man by inoculation, . for Professor Chantemesse* performed this experiment in Paris with matter taken from a boil which had been sent to him intact from Cairo.

Unlike Oriental sore, the distribution of the Nile boil is not confined to uncovered parts. It prefers the situa- tions ordinarily selected by boils, chiefly those where there has been some slight irritation of the skin ; it does not usually proceed to ulceration, and it does not last for several months, like the Oriental sore, for no indi- vidual boil usually remains more than fourteen days. Moreover, Professor Symmers made a culture on the third day from one of Mr. Madden's cases in Cairo and " grew a pure culture of Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus."'

I venture to suggest that it is unwise to continue in the belief that Egypt is the seat of Oriental sore, until the disease is discovered there in a person who has not left that country during the preceding two years, and who has not been directly inoculated from an imported case. 1 Annalea de VInst. Pasteur, 1887, p. 477, or Bull, de la Soc. Anat., 1887, p. 676. 2 " Nile Boils," by F. C. Madden, Journal of Tropical Medicine, 1906, p. 294.

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