Indigenous Amoebiasis: A Recent Outbreak in England

out of England, although cysts of Entamoeba histolytica have been found in the stools of 1.5^4.7% of such people (Morton et al., 1951). The cases which have been reported have all occurred sporadically, sometimes with a history of close association with a patient returned from overseas suffering from acute amoebic dysentery. The only large-scale epidemics of amoebic dysentery in a temperate climate were those in Chicago in 1933 and 1934. The first of these (Epidemic Amebic Dysentery, 1936) was due to the flooding of food stores with sewage from two broken sewers and to a cross-connexion be tween a waste-pipe and the water supply: 1,409 cases, with 98 deaths, were finally notified. The second epidemic followed the Chicago stockyards fire of May, 1934, during which firemen and civilian spectators drank water contaminated with sewage (Hardy and Spector, 1935).