Biometric study of spleen- and liver-weights in Africans and Europeans, with special reference to endemic malaria.

For over a century, spleen palpation has been the method used for estimating the degree of endemic malaria in a community. As there is no way of estimating the mean volume and weight of the spleen on the live individual, the only alternative is to examine the organ at autopsy.There is very little published information concerning the weight and size of the spleen in Africans, in spite of the obvious importance and interest of this problem in holo-endemic malarious areas.The first aim of the present study was to assess the biometric constants for spleen- and liver-weights recorded in a large number of autopsies in persons of all age-groups of the African population from Lagos and its environs.The relevant constants from autopsies of Europeans in a non-malarious area were then obtained and the two sets of data were compared.Finally, the author determined to what extent the results of past splenometric surveys in the live population of Lagos could be correlated with the autopsy findings in the same area.