Observations on paragonomiasis at the Quezon Institute.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the para-gonimus cases seen at the Quezon Institute for the last five years. These cases the authors consider fairly representative of patients with lung fluke manifestations in the Philippines. Paragonomiasis is sometimes called " Endemic Hemoptysis " because after a violent exertion or sometimes even without It attacks of hemoptysis of varying degree of severity occur. In 1877 this disease first became known to medical science. When a lung fluke was found in a tiger which died in the zoological garden at Ams-terdam, Holland. The director, Westerman sent the specimen to Kerbert who, unable to identify it, named the species Distoma westermani. In 1879, a Portuguese in Tansui, Formosa, was found to have lung fluke when he died, and the specimen was forthwith sent to Manson who in turn forwarded it to Cobbald who named it Distoma ringeri. It was Leuchart (1899) however, who gave the lung fluke such a masterly description that subsequent observers have been unable to add to it or even modify it. It was he who established the fact that the material from both the tiger and the man belong to the same species. In 1899 Brown established the genus Paragonimus to include these parasites. Since that time various reports have been published wherein the parasites have been found in both man and animals and in different organs such as the brain, lung, scrotum, orbit, pleural cavity and mesen-tery. Ward and Hirsh by 1915 were able to establish three species of mammalian fluke, calling the tiger form Paragonimus wester-mani; the human form Paragonimus ringeri; and the forms found in dogs, cats and pigs, Paragonimus hellicotti. Since there was not sufficient grounds to justify separation of the lung fluke found in the tiger from that of man, the older name, Paragonimus westermani finally prevailed and up to the present has been considered as the representative species. The disease caused by this fluke is considered a medical rarity Presented before the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Col