Identifier: uncinariasishook00ashf (find matches)
Title: Uncinariasis (Hookworm disease) in Porto Rico : a medical and economic problem
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Ashford, Bailey K. (Bailey Kelly), 1873-1934 Gutiérrez Igaravidez, Pedro Puerto Rico. Anemia Commission
Subjects: Anemia Hookworm disease Medical statistics Hookworm Infections
Publisher: Washington : Govt. Print. Off.
Contributing Library: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

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erican Medical Association, May 28,1910, Vol. LIV, pp. 1757-1761) : SYSTEMATIC WORK BEGUN. We began with only a handful of friends. The press thought it strange thathunger should be discovered to be due to a parasite, and based its incredu-lity on serious economic crises, through which the island was passing. Thewell-informed and moderately well-informed people, whose circumstances pro-tected them against the disease, as they were well shod, reasoned that as theywere well fed they were perfectly protected against this hunger-producingparasite, in contradistinction to the afflicted pale ones, who were desperatelypoor and had to live on bananas alone. In short, we had a difficult situationto meet. Had it not been for one saving clause we would have failed. Thatelement was the poor man himself. He was so utterly miserable that he couldnot be more so, and as he had faithfully embraced each and all promises to curehim of what he persistently called his enfermedad (illness), in spite of the
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)( UNCINARIASIS IN PORTO RICO. 29 more refined explanation of his better educated compatriots, he gingerlyaccepted our treatment. The moment we opened our hospital the sick began to arrive. We had toldthe Governor we might treat 600 cases, but when considerably more than 600had been treated in Bayamon in less than one month, and a cured patient beganto deposit his entire family and that of his neighbors at one morning clinic, itbecame evident that we had to move to some other town where we were notknown, or succumb to force of numbers. We moved to Utuado, said to be themost hungry of all of the Porto Rican municipalities, with a population of40,000. We rapidly reorganized our work to satisfy the demands we knewwould come, and in spite of every care and outside assistance we were againoverwhelmed with patients. They came from every barrio of the extensivemunicipality, afoot, horseback, and in hammocks. As soon as some notoriousold anemic, who had spent his last cent to buy iron pills,

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