Kala Azar. A handbook for students and practitioners
By L. Everard Napier (in charge of Kala Azar Research, Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine) and Ernest Muir (of Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine). vi + 150 pages, and appendix of charts, biliography and index. Eight illustrations in text. 1923. Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, London, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta
This book deals with visceral Leishmaniasis or Kala Azar as it occurs in India. Epidemiology and Etiology are briefly but adequately presented. Then follow Symptomatology, Pathology, and Laboratory Technique, Diagnosis, and, finally, Treatment, four sections which make up an excellent exposition of the clinical aspects of the disease.
We like this book. There is a minimum of the speculative and conjectural element. The authors know Kala Azar at first hand; they have observed, treated and studied hundreds of cases. Though working in a hospital in Calcutta, they are aware that the major part of the diagnosis and treatment, and much of the future progress in knowledge of the disease, rests with the general practitioner in the endemic districts. This book must be almost indispensable to the physicians so located; it must prove a valuable weapon in the effort to control and perhaps stamp out this important menace to public health in India.