Hook-Worm

a worm parasitic in the intestines of man and certain of the lower animals. The hook-worm is a hair-like animal. It looks like an inch of dirty gray thread. It was described in 1782 by a German zoologist who found it in badgers. A few years later it was found by another German in the intestine of a fox. The latter, noting certain rib-like supports in the flaring tail of the male, mistook them for hooks, and gave the name of Haakenwurm, of which our hook-worm is a translation. The word is not a misnomer, for the mouth is provided with four sharp hooks, the use of which will be mentioned later. Subsequently, the hook-worm was discovered in other animals, notably the dog and the horse. In 1879 an epidemic broke out among the Italian laborers who were constructing the St. Gothard Tunnel. It was found that the soil of the tunnel and the camps was filled with the eggs and larvae of the hook-worm. Once medical attention had been arrested, it was found that the hook-worm malady existed very generally in unsanitary gangs of Italians engaged in brick-making, constructing sewers, and similar occupations. The situation was no sooner under scrutiny than reports came in from Japan, Calcutta, Ceylon, Borneo, the Kimberley mines, Cape Colony, Egypt, Algiers, Abyssinia, Zanzibar, Madagascar, and other warm localities. Immigrants brought a case or two to America. Government experts found that dogs in the vicinity of Washington, D. C., were affected.

Dr. Smith, investigating an epidemic among the sheep of Texas, found a good half of some flocks dying from lack of blood produced by a hook-worm parasite. In 1896 he relinquished medical practice to search for an American hook-worm parasitic in man. To make an exciting story short, physicians were amazed--simply dumbfounded--to find that in the region between the Potomac and the Gulf of Mexico, no less than two million people of sound English ancestry were dragging feeble bodies, emaciated by the hook-worm. Shiftless, lazy "crackers," "poor whites," "poor white trash," "clay eaters," were the popular terms used to describe them. "Bloodless, anemic," said the doctors. "Their very blood has been sucked out of them, let out of them by hook-worms," says the medical expert. Generations of these Southern whites have craved dirt, have grown feeble, have had spasms, have bought carloads of patent medicines, and have gone through the world "shiftless" and "lazy," without knowing what was the matter with them. When science began to hunt for the cause, people roared over the search for the "lazy germ," but the medical experts went right on to the rescue of "emaciated men trying to wrest a living from half-tilled fields, and women, to whom rest never came, trying to nurse starveling babes at withered breasts." As Dr. Stiles said in a public address, and nobler words were never spoken on a battlefield, "It isn't a thing to laugh about, when women and children are dying." The "lazy germ" has been located. Science gives the patient a dose of thymol, the oil of thyme, to kill the hook-worm of which there may be from half a dozen to forty-six thousand in a single individual.

The life history of the hook-worm has been traced with intense interest. The adult animal presses its mouth against the wall of the human intestine, drawing a circular portion of the soft membrane into its gullet. Four sharp hooks set in the end of the gullet lay hold of the bit of intestine, a sharp lancet is thrust again and again into the space, bringing a current of blood with which the hook-worm gorges itself. A serum injected into the incisions prevents coagulation and stoppage of flow. After a time the hook-worm hunts a new place and repeats the operation. The incisions may continue to bleed, producing a flow of blood, or they may admit bacteria and become ulcers, or the spots may heal and harden and become useless for purposes of digestion. A few hook-worms may accomplish little beyond making the host feel that he is not right, but thousands produce emaciation and even death.

When the adult has reached the proper stage of growth thousands of eggs are produced. The eggs cannot hatch in darkness. They go with the body waste and hatch out in the open sunlight into wormlike larvae. They feed on filth. They pass through various larval stages. They crawl for yards through the warm earth of the south, seeking animal hosts. No doubt many enter the human body in meat and drink, but they do not depend on this method. If water containing the young be held in the palm of the hand, a prickling may be felt between the fingers. The unseen pests--tiny--miscroscopic--are boring in, and the flesh smarts. Half clothed children sitting and playing on contaminated soil become infested. The tiny larvae enter the pores of the skin and the follicles of the hair. They get into the capillaries and are hurried by the blood through the veins into the heart. From the heart they hasten with the blood into the lungs. Here they penetrate the lung cavities. They follow the cavities into the trachea. They crawl up the wind pipe and down the swallow into and through the stomach into the intestine of man. Many of the larvae die ere they complete the journey; many are killed by the lymph and are swept out of the body. Others reach their destination and develop, vampire fashion, and breed as described. How do doctors know so much? By observation, killing and examining animals. One eminent surgeon about to amputate a man's leg, washed it first carefully in soap and water, and then placed on it a drop of infected water. Ere the leg could be amputated and a section of skin be placed under the microscope, many of the larvae were half buried, and many were already out of sight within the skin.

The scientific name of the American hook-worm is Necator, which is Latin for murderer. The account of the skill and determination with which the profession has traced this bloody murderer forms a brilliant page in the annals of medical science. To the poor white trash derided by the darkey, science brings a twentieth century message: Take oil of thyme to kill the dozens and thousands of hook-worms that drain your vitality; stop eating dirt that fosters hook-worm growth; clean up the filth, if any, that surrounds your cabin; if you can't do that, remove to a spot that has not been contaminated; be cleanly; eat whole-some food: then, and not till then, your body will gain good red blood and strength; your lack-luster eye will regain the blue sparkle of your Saxon ancestors, and your hopeless face will regain the ambition which is your American birthright. If, indeed, science is correct in diagnosis and in remedy; if it can convert the thriftless homes of 2,000,000 people into homes of comfort and prosperity, it will have conferred a grater boon on the nation that even Thomas Jefferson, when he bought homes for 100,000,000 people for $15,000,000.

A word should be added on the origin of our hook-worm. It is called Necator Americanus, but it ought to be called Necator Africanus. It is found among the pigmies of the Congo Forest and in the village of the Guinea negro. It is one of the prices we have paid for negro. It is one of the prices we have paid for negro slavery. From fifty to ninety-eight per cent of the southern cabin negroes are infected, but they feel no inconvenience. A negro can carry enough hook-worms to stretch a white man in his grave, and yet never know it. The soil about the southern cabins is contaminated beyond question. The negro and his surroundings form a vast hook-worm culture. Contact with the negro has brought this great curse on the white man of the southern hills and forests. The riflemen of unerring eye, the men in coonskin caps, who followed Sumter and Marion, and the men who won at King's Mountain and Cowpens, were not degenerates. Not climate nor poverty, but contact with slavery and the African hook-worm, has brought these once brave people to their low degree. Conditions must be revolutionized before the country can be purged of the disease. In 1909 John D. Rockefeller placed $1,000,000 at the disposal of the United States Marine Hospital Service for use in fighting the hook-worm.