Fungous Diseases in Great Britain

The new interest manifested in fungous diseases during the last three decades is in some measure a result, but probably in greater measure the cause. of the recent notable advances made in medical mycology, especially in the United States, some South American States, France, and Italy. The study of medical mycology has been neglected by -us, but it should not be thought that fungous diseases are less important in Great Britain and the Colonial Empire than in other countries. At the present time little is known of the nature, the incidence, or the gravity of our indigenous or imported systemic mycoses, and much remains to be learned of our common epiphytic infections. Towards the end of 1943 the Committee for Research in Medical Mycology (Medical Research Council) proposed a survey of fungous diseases in Great Britain, and a tentative scheme to collect data was prepared. Pathologists of the Emergency Pathological Service and members of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland were invited to submit, for mycological examination and identification, morbid specimens or cultures from known, suspected, or possible mycoses, and at a later date a similar invitation was made to readers of the British Medical Journal through an annotation (B.M.J., 1944, 2, 283). The response to these appeals, during the first eighteen months, has been gratifying. and correspondence and specimens were received from 140 pathologists and clinicians-the correspondence bearing evi- dence of the increasing interest which is being taken in the subject. In all, 1,094 specimens were received, which may be classified as follows: From suspected epiphytic infections, 688; fixed tissues for sectioning, 41 ; fresh tissues for culture, 42; smears and sections, 130; pus, exudates, and other body fluids, 16: cultures for identification, 62; miscellaneous speci- mens, including sputum, 115. As no report of any of the grave systemic mycoses referred to in this paper has yet been published by the doctor concerned, detailed clinical or other descriptions of the cases cannot be given in the following summary.