Amebiasis, American Lecture Series No. 191. A monograph in American Lectures in Internal Medicine
by Ernest Carroll Faust, Head of the Division of Parasitology, Department of Tropical Medicine and Public Health, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. 154 pp. illustrated, with one plate in color. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C Thomas, and Blackwell, Ltd., Oxford, England and Ryerson Press, Toronto Canada. 1954. Price $4.75
This concise monograph on infection with Endamoeba histolytica presents lucidly the knowledge and viewpoint which Dr. Faust has acquired in his long study of the subject. The six chapters deal with the etiology, natural history, pathology, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment and control of the infection. Each phase of the subject is dealt with in accurate detail, based upon the author's own observations or those of other workers, and supported by a bibliography of 219 references.
A few details are worthy of special note. In the section on modes of transmission emphasis is given to fomites, especially soiled clothing, in ignorant rural families and in children's asylums and mental hospitals. Water, food and flies are also duly emphasized. The development of the tissue lesions in the colon and elsewhere is accurately described and well illustrated. The clinical manifestations ascribed to amebiasis include an “asyndromic” group, and hepatomegaly in children, which this reviewer believes may be erroneously diagnosed as amebic because of inaccurate examination of intestinal contents.