Testicular immunology
Mumps is a viral disease which causes swelling of the salivary glands and testes. The mumps virus lives in the upper respiratory tract and spreads through direct contact with saliva. Prior to widespread vaccination programs, it was a common childhood disease. Mumps is generally not serious in children, but in adults, where sperm have matured in the testis, it can cause more severe complications, such as infertility.
Gastrodiscoides
A new helminthologist at the London School of Tropical Medicine, Robert T. Leiper, re-examined the parasite in 1913. He noted the distinctive characters such as a tuberculated genital cone, the position of the genital orifice, a smooth ventral disc, and the testes in tandem position. These outstanding features prompted him to create an entirely new genus, "Gastrodiscoides", for the specimen. This taxonomic revision had criticism, as some of the descriptions were later found to be flawed, such as the position of testes; these criticisms prevented it from coming into general acceptance. It was later observed that the parasite was much more common to pigs and other mammals than in humans. The first report of infection of pigs was in Cochinchina, Vietnam, in 1911. In 1913, it was further confirmed that the rate of porcine infection was as high as 5%. Then a large number of living flukes was recovered from dead Napu mouse-deer at the Zoological Gardens of the Zoological Society of London. The mouse-deer was Prince of Wales's collection from Malay. The shortcomings of Leiper's descriptions did not prevent the generic name "Gastrodiscoides" becoming more and more advocated in the early 1920s. The currently accepted nomenclature was fortified by the British parasitologist J. J. C. Buckley, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (where he was then a Milner Research Fellow), whose descriptions were based on high incidence of the parasitism among the Assamese in India. His first report in 1939, followed by a body of evidences in support of Leiper's proposition, enabled him to vindicate the validity of a separate genus, "Gastrodiscoides", hence the binomial name "Gastrodiscoides hominis". His report was the pioneer description of the life cycle of the fluke and the prevalence of gastrodiscoidiasis. In his survey of three villages in Assam, there was found a surprisingly high incidence, with over 40% of the population was infected. J. J. C. Buckley's report is the most useful to the modern classification of "G. hominis".