The first documented case of loiasis occured in 1770 in a girl from the West Indies who was observed to have a Loa loa worm migrating across her conjunctiva (Garcia, 2001). Roger Argyll-Robertson (pictured above) recorded the first comprehensive description of the Loa loa worm in 1895 after he removed an adult worm of each sex from the conjunctiva of a West African woman (Argyll-Robertson, 1895). Argyll-Robertson described in detail the clinical presentation of the patient's infection, especially the swellings on her arm. Because the patient had lived in Old Calabar, the patches of edema were referred to as Calabar swellings. That terminology has been used to describe the swellings associated with loiasis to this day (Garcia, 2001). Robert Thomson Leiper first established that Chrysops dimidaiata and Chrysops silacae were the vectors for Loa loa (Leiper, 1913).

This image of Douglas Argyll Robertson is from the Clendening History of Medicine Library and Museum at the University of Kansas Medical Center.