On the presence of peculiar parasitic organisms in the tissue of
a specimen of Delhi Boil.

BY

SURGEON-MAJOR D. D. CUNNINGHAM, M.B.,

SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE SANITARY COMMISSIONER WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.

      In the heading given above it will be observed that the old term "Delhi
Boil" has been employed in place of the mere comprehensive one "Oriental
Sore." The local designation has been deliberately reverted to, because it
appears to be quite possible that growths presenting the generic characters of
Oriental sore may be due to distinct specific causes in different localities. The
neoplasm in the present instance was certainly associated with, and very pos-
sibly due to, the presence of a peculiar form of parasitic organism. Apart from
this, however, it presented no specific characters, but was essentially a simple
granuloma such as might arise in connection with the presence of persistent
irritation dependent on very various causes. In employing the term "boil"
rather than "sore" I have been guided by the desire to indicate clearly from
the outset that the parasitic bodies in this case occurred independent of the
existence of any raw surface—of any solution in the continuity of the cutaneous
surface—and were present in the initial stage of the disease, in which there is
merely an accumulation of granulomatous neoplasm within the dermal tissue.

      There can be no occasion here for considering at length the general condi-
tions in association with which affections of this character arise in India, as this
was fully done a few years ago by Dr. Lewis and myself in a paper on "The
Oriental Sore," since the publication of which no important additions to our
knowledge of the subject have been made. I shall accordingly confine myself
almost entirely to giving an account of the structural features of the specimen
under consideration. This was obtained from Delhi, where it was excised from
the person of a patient in the dispensary, placed at once in absolute alcohol and
sent down to me in Calcutta for examination. In the hard and shrunken con-
dition in which it arrived it measured one inch in length by 0.416 of an inch in
maximum thickness. It presented the usual bluntly convex contour, and, as

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