Constrictive Pericarditis Resulting from Dracunculosis

Abstract

On inquiry from the patient and her relatives it was established that she was very fond of watercress, which she was wont to gather from roadside ditches near her house, having once been heard to complain that " the cows had eaten it all."A feature of the case was the entire absence of a history of the occurrence at any time of an acute febrile illness with " liver pain," such as is characteristic of the invasive (larval) stage of the disease.For this reason it is difficult to fix the time of infection, but the duration of the attacks of colic and the grossly pathological condi- tion of the bile-duct indicate that it was not later than 1959, and as that was a very dry year, unsuitable for the development of the fluke, 1958 seems the latest time -this was the year of the outbreak previously referred to.