FILARIASIS  , the name of a disease due to the nematode Filaria sanguinis honainis . A milky

appearance of the urine, due to the presence of a substance like chyle, which forms a clot, had been observed from time to time, especially in tropical and subtropical countries; and it was proved by Dr Wucherer of Bahia, and by Dr Timothy Lewis, that this peculiar condition is uniformly associated with the presence in the blood of minute eel-like worms, visible only under the microscope, being the embryo forms of a Filaria (see NEMATODA) . Sometimes the discharge of lymph takes place at one or more points of the surface of the body, and there is in other cases a condition of naevoid elephantiasis of the scrotum, or lymph-scrotum . More or less of blood may occur along with the chylous fluid in the urine . Both the chyluria and the presence of filariae in the blood are curiously intermittent; it may happen that not a single filaria is to be seen during the daytime, while they swarm in the blood at night, and it has been ingeniously shown by Dr S . Mackenzie that they may be made to disappear if the patient sits up all night, reappearing while he sleeps through the day . Sir P . Manson proved that mosquitoes imbibe the embryo filariae from the blood of man; and that many of these reach full development within the mosquito, acquiring their freedom when the latter resorts to water, where it dies after depositing its eggs . Mosquitoes would thus be the intermediate host of the filariae, and their introduction into the human body would be through the medium of water (see PARASITIC DISEASES) .