Illustrations of African Blood-sucking Flies, other than Mosquitoes and Tsetse-flies

Abstract

THE extraordinary progress that has been made of recent years in the study of tropical medicine has had the result of establishing clearly the general truth that most of the diseases peculiar to the tropics, whether of man or animals, are due to the effects of parasites, microscopic or ultra-microscopic, introduced into the system by the agency of blood-sucking invertebrates. The intermediate host in such cases is, usually an arthropod, and most frequently a dipterous insect. Not only has this mode of infection been demonstrated beyond all possibility of reasonable doubt, for such formidable scourges as malaria, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, and various diseases caused by trypanosomes in animals, such as nagana and surra, but it is highly probable that many other forms of disease, less thoroughly investigated at present, originate in a similar manner. Moreover, as in many other cases of parasitism throughout the animal kingdom, a particular disease-producing parasite may be transmitted from one vertebrate host to another only by one restricted group, perhaps even by a single species, of the blood-sucking invertebrates concerned, while other forms may be incapable of harbouring the parasite, or, to express the matter more correctly, are capable of digesting the parasite together with the blood, when taken up in the usual course of feeding.

Illustrations of African Blood-sucking Flies, other than Mosquitoes and Tsetse-flies.

By E. E. Austen. With coloured figures by Grace Edwards. Pp. xv + 221; 13 plates; 3 text-figures. (London: British Museum, Natural History, 1909.) Price 1l. 7s. 6d.

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