Ainhum

About the corridors of Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, Sailor John Davis last week gingerly shuffled. On his swarthy, Africa-tanned face, was a look of puzzled anxiety. Internes watched him; nurses watched him; busy surgeons paused for an inquiring word. Sailor John had a funny looking fibrous ring around the base of each little toe. He did not know what caused them. Perhaps on his recent job of exploring in African jungles he had acquired some mysterious disease. Yet it caused him no pain. Only, his little toes were acquiring a dead look. Leprosy? "No," declared examining surgeons called in for consultation. They retreated back to their student-day recollections, remembered the syndrome of an obscure, rare disease called by U. S. Negro slaves "ainhum," a term since absorbed into medical terminology.

Sailor John certainly had ainhum. If the fibrous rings about his small toes were to continue in growth, as they surely would without surgical intervention, they would eat around through the muscles, tendons, nerves, bones and finally the atrophying blood vessels. Then those toes would fall off, painlessly. The disease is caused by no known germ or organism, yet probably by some jungle parasite. Slaves just imported into the U. S. used to have it once in a while. After their little toes decayed and dropped off, other toes were liable to become infected. One case is on medical record where such piecemeal, painless degeneration took place 60 times until the patient's entire leg was gone. Medicines are no good.

The surgeons cut off Sailor John's toes in hopes that they might save the rest of him.