A guide to the shell and starfish galleries : $b (Mollusca, Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, Tunicata, Echinoderma, and Worms)British Museum (Natural History). Department of Zoology
Science
A guide to the shell and starfish galleries : $b (Mollusca, Polyzoa, Brachiopoda, Tunicata, Echinoderma, and Worms)
British Museum (Natural History). Department of Zoology
Echinodermata; Mollusks; Worms
The parasitic Platyhelmia—the Tapeworms (_Cestoda_) and the Flukes
(_Trematoda_)—occupy Case I.; the life history of the common Tapeworm
(_Tænia solium_) is shown by the aid of models and figures. A model of
the anterior end of the common Tapeworm shows the four suckers and the
crown of hooks; the unjointed neck is followed by the joints
(_proglottids_), which increase in size the farther they are from the
neck. Several entire specimens of _Tænia_ follow, showing the size of
the whole worm and the form of its joints. The structure of the body is
shown in the models of two joints. The growth and development of the
_Tapeworm_ is dependent on a migration or a change of the hosts which it
inhabits in the various stages of its life; and although the different
kinds of Tapeworm differ from each other somewhat in certain details of
their migration and development, their life history exhibits, on the
whole, the same events which we find in _Tænia solium_, a common
Tapeworm of man in Northern Europe. This worm is matured in the
intestines of man; its final joints consist merely of fertilized ova
which have already passed through the earlier stages of development;
when the joints are detached and discharged, their contents escape in
the form of embryos contained in a thick chitinous shell. If these are
now swallowed by a pig, the shell is digested by the gastric juices of
the new host, and a rounded embryo, which is provided with three pairs
of hooks, is set free; by means of these hooks the guest makes its way
through the wall of the stomach or intestine, and finally settles down
in the muscles of its host. The embryo now loses its hooks, and
gradually acquires a bladder-like form, the central cavity of which is
filled with fluid. This bladder-worm (_Cysticercus_) has its outer wall
pushed inwards at the anterior end, and on this hooks and suckers become
developed. We have now a narrow head and neck with an attached bladder,
the head being at this time hollow. If during the long time that these
bladder-worms remain alive, the pig is killed for food, its flesh is
found to be “measly”; if it is afterwards insufficiently cooked and
eaten, the worms are conveyed into the human stomach. Here the
bladder-like termination becomes absorbed, and, the neck beginning to
grow, we have the commencement of the form from which we started, and
the completion of that “vicious circle” which is so curious a
characteristic of many forms of parasitic life.
[Illustration:
Fig. 8.
_Tænia solium_: showing the head (_h_) with its suckers (_s′_) and
crown of hooks (_s_), the unjointed neck (_n_), and a few of the
succeeding joints (_j_).
]
In other Tapeworms the cyst may be more complicated than that in the
pig, as, for example, the form found in the sheep’s brain or the liver
of the horse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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