Biomedical Ephemera, or: A Frog for Your Boils

Elephantiasis caused by lymphatic filariasis

This patient was most likely infected by Wuchereria bancrofti, as Brugia malayi and Brugia timori are very regionally-specific to the areas around Timor and Malaysia.

W. bancrofti was originally endemic only to West and Central Africa, until it was introduced to the Caribbean and Southern United States by the slave trade. There was an unusually high prevalence around Charleston, South Carolina, until it suddenly disappeared in the early 1920s. As no active eradication campaigns were active, and no anomalous weather patterns were recorded around that period, it’s unknown what caused the sudden dearth of new cases.

[Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. George M. Gould and William L. Pyle, 1900.]