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Historical Note on Loa Loa: a Reinterpretation^*

Loa loa, also known as the African eye worm, is a common parasite in the central part of West Africa. As Chrysops silacea and C. dimidiata, the only important vectors of loaiasis, are found exclusively in the tropical rain forests of West Africa, the parasite's transmission is confined to this region. References by early writers to the extraction of Loa loa from the eye of a man on the Island of Ormus (today known as Hormuz or Hormus) in the Persian Gulf apparently were based on a misinterpretation of an illustration by de Bry (1598) of the blinding of a royal relative.

Accepted for publication March 13, 1976.

^* Editor's note: Under the title "The earliest record of Filaria loa" Henry B. Ward in 1905 published in English in Zoologische Annalen (Vol. I, pp. 376–384) an article describing his search of European libraries for all references to the earliest published records of "Filaria loa," and having examined all cited articles concluded, as did the present author, "In view of this discussion it may fairly be maintained that the internal evidence also is irreconcilable with the theory of Guyon, Manson and Blanchard. Neither the account of this voyage nor the questionable plate can stand as a record of Filaria loa, but only for Dracunculus medinensis. The earliest record of F. loa becomes then that of Mongin (1770) nearly two centuries later.".

Articles by the author of the present paper calling attention to the records discussed in it have been published in Die Medizinische Welt (Vol. 14: 2110–2113, 1975) and Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde (Vol. 169: 383–386, 1976).