Parassitologia最新文献

Edmond and Etienne Sergent, "the Sergent brothers", were both born in Algeria. They both studied medicine at the Algiers Medical School and then followed the Course of Microbiology of Emile Roux at the Institut Pasteur in Paris (1899-1900). From 1900, they were put in charge of a permanent mission aimed at antimalarial control in Algeria, which was supervised by the Institut Pasteur. The first campaign was carried out during the summer of 1902 at a station of the East Algerian Railway Company. The success of this mission lead to the creation of the Antimalaric Department of Algeria in 1904, which was directed by Etienne Sergent for the duration his life. This antimalarial programme was progressively extended to many other locations. The programme was optimized between 1927 and 1947, in the experimental field study of the Ouled Mendil Marsh, where global environmental measures and drainage lead to settlement of farms, the families of which did not suffered from malaria. At a time when neither insecticides nor synthetic antimalarial drug existed, antimalarial control measures that were developed tended to target human reservoirs and the mosquito vectors. The extension of the programme across the Algerian territory lead to a decrease of both malaria endemicity and extension of affected areas.

The origin and transmission of African filariasis has long remained enigmatic. Between 1915 and 1917, the pathogenic role of Onchocerca volvulus and its transmission by insects of the genus Simulium, had been established in Guatemala by Rodolfo Robles who took opportunity of a series of discoveries to formulate his hypothesis on the origin of Latin Americna Onchocerchiasis. The present paper gives an historical account of the steps and the context having led to the formulation of the aetiological hypothesis and the relevant vector identification.

Medical Entomology emerged in Brazil in the late nineteenth century, through the initiative of a group of physicians dedicated to researching microorganisms related to diseases of public health importance, especially yellow fever and malaria. They led the institutionalization of Bacteriology and Tropical Medicine in southeast Brazil and the sanitation of coastal cities and, subsequently, rural areas. Medical Entomology provided the professionals who would undertake campaigns against agricultural plagues, as well as the institutionalization of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine. In the present article, I intend to show how relations between the professionals who gave life to Medical Entomology in Brazil were interwoven and to illustrate their relations with entomologists in other countries. I will also present an overview of the research problems faced by Brazilian entomologists at the turn of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth.

The entomological collection of the Institute Oswaldo Cruz is one of the most representative of neotropical insects, comprising a diverse variety of specimens of distinct taxonomic groups, including those not linked to research in tropical medicine. The present work retraces the history of the collection and reports on its main actors and their professional relationships, emphasizing the peculiarity of such an important collection still being housed in a medical research institution.

The golden age of medical entomology, 1870-1920, is often celebrated for the elucidation of the aetiology of vector-borne diseases within the rubric of the emergent discipline of tropical medicine. Within these triumphal accounts, the origins of vector control science and technology remain curiously underexplored; yet vector control and eradication constituted the basis of the entomologists' expertise within the emergent specialism of medical entomology. New imperial historians have been sensitive to the ideological implications of vector control policies in the colonies and protectorates, but the reciprocal transfer of vector-control knowledge, practices and policies between periphery and core have received little attention. This paper argues that medical entomology arose in Britain as an amalgam of tropical medicine and agricultural entomology under the umbrella of "economic entomology". An examination of early twentieth-century anti-housefly campaigns sheds light on the relative importance of medical entomology as an imperial science for the careers, practices, and policies of economic entomologists working in Britain. Moreover, their sensitivity to vector ecology provides insight into late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century urban environments and environmental conditions of front-line war.

The development of entomology and medical entomology in France is discussed in the context of the prevalence of Lamarckian ideas concerning heredity and evolution. Lamarckian ideas have greatly influenced research carried out at the Institut Pasteur by Emile Roubaud and more generally in Felix Mesnil's laboratory, as well as research in general entomology at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle. By contrast, it did not influence research and teaching at the Faculté de médecine of Paris or that of physicians more generally including those in overseas Instituts Pasteur, which clearly kept away from theoretical discussion concerning the origin of variations and adaptation in insects of medical interest.

This article provides an historical overview of developments in veterinary entomology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During that period state employed entomologists and veterinary scientists discovered that ticks were responsible for transmitting a number of livestock diseases in South Africa. Diseases such as heartwater, redwater and gallsickness were endemic to the country. They had a detrimental effect on pastoral output, which was a mainstay of the national economy. Then in 1902 the decimating cattle disease East Coast fever arrived making the search for cures or preventatives all the more urgent. Vaccine technologies against tick-borne diseases remained elusive overall and on the basis of scientific knowledge, the South African state recommended regularly dipping animals in chemical solutions to destroy the ticks. Dipping along with quarantines and culls resulted in the eradication of East Coast fever from South Africa in the early 1950s. However, from the 1930s some ticks evolved a resistance to the chemical dips meaning that diseases like redwater were unlikely to be eliminated by that means. Scientists toiled to improve upon existing dipping technologies and also carried out ecological surveys to enhance their ability to predict outbreaks. Over the longer term dipping was not a panacea and ticks continue to present a major challenge to pastoral farming.

Culicoides were described for the first time in England in 1713, but named by Latreille in 1809 only. Even so, they were better known as Ceratopogon until Kieffer reintroduced the name Culicoides. The family name became Ceratopogonidae, the description by Meigen (1803) being better adapted to that systematic level. Culicoides were considered simply as biting insects until it was found that they can carry filaria and viruses. In 1944, du Toit in Transvaal described their role in the transmission of blue-tongue virus. Blue-tongue disease has since extended progressively northward from South Africa, disseminated by Culicoides imicola. At the end of the 20th century, it reached the southern shores of the Mediterranean sea, and has since threatened the southern Europe. Surveillance and prevention procedures were put in place, but fortress Europe was taken breached when a different strain of the virus entered through Belgium in 2006. Transmitted by local Culicoides species that were aggressive and abundant, the disease spread quickly, in a disastrous epizootic southward through more than half of France. Westward, infected insects have been carried by wind over the Channel, introducing the disease to England.

This paper addresses the theories and debates concerning the influence of environment on vectors and species variation. In particular, it focuses on theories about how climate and domesticated animals affected vectors that transmitted sleeping sickness and malaria. Emile Roubaud (1882-1962), a Pasteurian entomologist, worked on the adaptation and variation of Glossina fly races in order to elaborate environmental interventions for sleeping sickness campaigns in Africa. He then developed the theory concerning Glossina flies' biting preferences for livestock, and the implications of such preferences for human protection against sleeping sickness transmission. Subsequently, he extended this theory about insect biting preferences to malaria in Europe. He thus used one disease model, the sleeping sickness complex, and extended it to another, the malaria complex. He subsequently became interested into zoophilic races of Anopheles maculipennis and advocated the hypothesis that the zoophilic Anophelines' maxillary index was a decisive feature in malaria transmission, for it could help preventing humans from the bite of the Anopheles vector. The paper also analyzes how these theories were received and debated at the time of their publication in scientific journals and proceedings.

This essay examines how knowledge and practices around entomology and parasitology travelled and the consequences of their mobility. In exploring three anti-malaria campaigns in French Soudan before 1960, it argues that the history of medical entomology's travels entailed multiple temporal, spatial, social translations that African medical personnel, intellectuals, healers, and farmers in French Soudan reinterpreted, appropriated, and sometimes wholly rejected. This essay also focuses on "erroneous" translations, detailing how and why middle class medical personnel and intellectuals interpreted and reformulated farmers' and healers' diagnostic categories that may or may not be malaria. Anti-mosquito and antilarval interventions, and more generally anti-malaria interventions, influenced how African colonial subjects and health workers understood certain vectors and of certain maladies. These understandings, in turn, shaped the consequences of subsequent public health measures. Histories of translated parasitological and entomological knowledge and etiologies of illness have critical implications for contemporary malaria control efforts: interventions to reduce malaria transmission through various kinds of entomological controls that require active participation of local populations cannot be effective if all participants cannot agree upon what is being controlled or prevented.