Out of the Ditches

Out of a T.W.A. plane at La Guardia Field last week stepped a bald, strong-jawed man carrying two tiny wooden boxes. Inside the boxes, carefully packed between a layer of mud and some wet weeds, were 200 tiny ( 1/4-in. diameter) snails (Bullinus truncatus). The snails were heavily infested with larvae of the fluke Schistosoma haematobium, which burrows under the skin and travels through the bloodstream to nest in and around the bladder. The infestation causes Bilharziasis (a form of schistosomiasis), resulting in passage of blood in the urine. Half of Egypt's 19,000,000 people suffer from it; throughout Africa and Asia, an estimated 400 million people have related forms of schistosomiasis.

Dr. Claude Heman Barlow, 72, one of the world's leading authorities on schistosomiasis, had collected the snails in Egypt's labyrinthine irrigation ditches. An expert in Egypt's ministry of public health, he deliberately caught the disease in 1944 during experiments to protect the U.S. against infestation by returning servicemen. The only effective cure for him was injections of tartar emetic, which left him nauseated for eight months.

Egyptians, who use their streams and ditches as drinking fountains, laundries, baths and latrines, dislike the tartar emetic cure because, despite months of discomfort, they can be reinfested in 20 minutes. Dr. Barlow is trying to kill the snails which carry the disease by putting copper sulphate in the water (a concentration strong enough to kill snails is still too weak to affect humans).

Now Dr. Barlow hopes that New York University's College of Medicine and the Public Health Service, through experiments on animals, can find a curative drug for schistosomiasis that can be taken orally. He believes that such a drug may possibly be found within the next two years.

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