Goundou: a historical form of yaws

Abstract

[...]stage (late) yaws features severe skin ulcers and sometimes bone destruction causing severe disabling deformities and disfiguration. Because of its highly stigmatising effect on the patient's appearance, goundou posed a nosological and clinical problem for doctors at the beginning of the 20th century. Several explanations were proposed, including infection induced by insect larvae penetrating into the nasal cavities, and a disorder resembling Paget's disease.7 In his insightful analysis published in The Lancet in 1900, A J Chalmers7 mentioned the connection between goundou and the primary lesion of yaws. Some ethnic groups in the Ivory Coast had already noted this connection, and designated mother yaws by the same names—ie, yaws and goundou.16 From 1912 to 1917, Paul Botreau-Roussel of the French colonial army medical corps served as a surgeon on the railroad ambulance in the Ivory Coast, which was a hyperendemic region for yaws at that time.