This uncertainty in the results of the investigation as to the cause of the loco disease turned the attention of observers into other lines. President Ingersoll,[121] of the State Agricultural College of Colorado, in his autopsies on sheep was struck by the presence of tapeworms (_Taenia expansa_) in the gall duct and small intestines. He apparently tried to prove a relationship between the tapeworms and the locoed condition by feeding the extract of a loco plant to sheep, and thus showing its harmlessness. He prepared a decoction from 20 pounds of loco plant (the species was not stated) and boiled this down from 12 gallons to 1 quart. This concentrated extract was fed in three days to a bottle-fed lamb; this lamb showed no symptoms, although kept under observation for two weeks. This theory of the causation of loco by worms was also considered by Curtice,[122] and later brought forward by Steele[123] and Marshall.[124] This idea is very suggestive when considered in relation to the etiology of bothriocephalous anæmia.[125] Others, again, have claimed that the disease is due to a parasite found upon the loco plants, but all specimens examined by entomologists proved to be harmless.[126] Lloyd, from his study of the subject, says: From first to last I have failed in obtaining a characteristic proximate principle, either from the fresh or dried plant. The disease called loco was as murky as the milk sickness so prevalent in the new settlements of Indiana and Kentucky in early days, and, like the numberless herbs that have been presumed to produce that obscure peculiar disease, milk sickness, loco was unresponsive to my chemistry.[127] It may be safely said that if a specimen of the plant were to be examined in the ordinary manner by a chemist who had no idea of its importance he would report that it did not contain a characteristic proximate constituent.[128] Can it be that an admixture of loco and some undetermined plant or earth infected with bacteria taken with the roots, each innocuous under other conditions, can by digestion together in the stomach and intestines result in the production of a poison?[129] To sum up, it seems to the writer that the poison of loco is a product, and not an educt.[130] But Lloyd adds, in speaking of the reports of various experts and ranchmen: Their description concerning its toxic action on animals agreed, and it was folly to argue that so many observers from so many sections of the country could be misled. There must be an undetermined something behind the loco-weed.[131]