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1852 Discovery is briefly noted in Diseases of the Liver by George Budd.
1857 In his translation of On Animal and Vegetable Parasites, ER Lankester refers to the
discovery and names the agent Distoma Buskii after its discoverer. Busk objected and suggested the
name Distoma crassum, which was adopted in subsequent publications. Controversy shortly ensues
when it is discovered that D. crassum had already been used in 1836 to describe another parasite.
Everyone loses interest until the parasite resurfaces in 1874.
1874 A missionary and his wife residing in China consult an English doctor about persistent
diarrhea and are treated for various well-known diseases without success. Eventually, 12 worms are
found in their stool and showed to Busk, who immediately recognizes them as the species he had
discovered years before. At the same time, a worm passed in the vomit of a 15 year-old Chinese boy
makes its way to English parasitologists and is misidentified twice as similar species. The
mistake is not corrected for many years.
1887 J Poirier describes a worm passed by a 35 year old Chinese woman as the D. crassum
discovered by Busk, many parasitologists argue that it is not.
1902 Odhner examines fluke samples from a Chinese boy, expelled in 1890, and improves on
the
description assigning them to the genus Fasciolopsis (Latin: Fasciola, fillet; Greek: opsis,
resembling). He names the worms in question Fasciolopsis buski. This work, however, passes under
the radar of most parasitologists at the time.
1908 A fluke passed by an eight year old Chinese girl is named Kwan's Fluke after its
supposed
discoverer, but is later revealed to be Busk's D. crassum damaged by intestinal juices.
1909 Flukes pass from a sailor from Calcutta, originally diagnosed as having Typhoid fever.
E
Rodenwaldt believes they are a new species and calls them F. fulleborni.
1917 Brown studies samples of these flukes and renames them F. spinifera after the
characteristic
cuticle spines.
1919 All the confusion comes to an end when KW Goddard at the Christian Hospital in
Shaohsing,
China studies over 400 samples of the flukes and conforms to the names F. buski, F. goddardi, and
F. rathouisi for three variants of the worm.
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