about
2000.

ANKYLOSIS, or ANCHYLOSIS (from Gr. [Greek: ankulos], bent, crooked), a
stiffness of a joint, the result of injury or disease. The rigidity may
be complete or partial and may be due to inflammation of the tendinous
or muscular structures outside the joint or of the tissues of the joint
itself. When the structures outside the joint are affected, the term
"false" ankylosis has been used in contradistinction to "true"
ankylosis, in which the disease is within the joint. When inflammation
has caused the joint-ends of the bones to be fused together the
ankylosis is termed _osseous_ or complete. Excision of a completely
ankylosed shoulder or elbow may restore free mobility and usefulness to
the limb. "Ankylosis" is also used as an anatomical term, bones being
said to ankylose (or anchylose) when, from being originally distinct,
they coalesce, or become so joined together that no motion can take
place between them.

ANKYLOSTOMIASIS, or ANCHYLOSTOMIASIS (also called helminthiasis,
"miners' anaemia," and in Germany _Wurmkrankheit_), a disease to which
in recent years much attention has been paid, from its prevalence in the
mining industry in England, France, Germany, Belgium, North Queensland
and elsewhere. This disease (apparently known in Egypt even in very
ancient times) caused a great mortality among the negroes in the West
Indies towards the end of the 18th century; and through descriptions
sent from Brazil and various other tropical and sub-tropical regions, it
was subsequently identified, chiefly through the labours of Bilharz and
Griesinger in Egypt (1854), as being due to the presence in the
intestine of nematoid worms (_Ankylostoma duodenalis_) from one-third to
half an inch long. The symptoms, as first observed among the negroes,
were pain in the stomach, capricious appetite, pica (or dirt-eating),
obstinate constipation followed by diarrhoea, palpitations, small and
unsteady pulse, coldness of the skin, pallor of the skin and mucous
membranes, diminution of the secretions, loss of strength and, in cases
running a fatal course, dysentery, haemorrhages and dropsies. The
parasites, which cling to the intestinal mucous membrane, draw their
nourishment from the blood-vessels of their host, and as they are found
in hundreds in the body after death, the disorders of digestion, the
increasing anaemia and the consequent dropsies and other cachectic
symptoms are easily explained. The disease was first