Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals: Including Some Account of the EctozoaCobbold, T. Spencer (Thomas Spencer)
Science
Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals: Including Some Account of the Ectozoa
Cobbold, T. Spencer (Thomas Spencer)
Helminths; Parasites
One of the most valuable contributions to our knowledge of the
prevalence of hydatid disease affecting animals is that supplied by
Dr Cleghorn, from a statistical table constructed by the executive
commissariat officers stationed at Mooltan. The record in question shows
that out of 2109 slaughtered animals, no fewer than 899 were affected
with hydatid disease. This is equal to more than forty-two per cent. In
the majority of cases, both the lungs and liver were affected, cysts
were found 829 times in the liver and 726 times in the lungs. In a few
instances they were present in the kidneys, and also occasionally in the
spleen. The inference from all this is that in India, if not elsewhere,
the echinococcus disease is much less common in man than it is in
animals. The explanation is simple enough, since cattle have more ready
access to, and less scruple in partaking of filthy water and food in or
upon which the eggs of the _Tænia echinococcus_ abound.
Into purely professional questions connected with the treatment of the
echinococcus malady I do not here enter; nevertheless, in connection
with hygiene I may observe that the prevalence of hydatids in any
country is strictly dependent upon the habits of the people. The close
intimacy subsisting between the peasantry and their canine companions
is the primary source of the endemic; and where dogs are not kept, it
is well nigh impossible that the disease should be contracted. The fact
that every Icelandic peasant possesses, on an average, six dogs, and
that these dogs share the same dwelling (eating off the same plates and
enjoying many other privileges of intimate relationship) sufficiently
explains the frequency of hydatids in that country. According to Krabbe,
the sexually mature _Tæniæ_ occur in 28 p. c. of Icelandic dogs,
whereas in Copenhagen he found it twice only in 500 dogs examined. In
his work (quoted below, p. 58, or Fr. Edit., p. 60) Krabbe comments on
a sensational passage which, in my introductory treatise (p. 283), I
had quoted from a popular memoir by Leuckart (‘Unsere Zeit,’ s. 654,
1862). The practitioners whom we had spoken of as “quacks” are mostly
homœopaths; and it appears that even those who are not in any legal
sense professional men “treat their patients much in the same way as
ordinary medical men.” It simply comes to this, that, instead of _dog’s
excrement_ forming with the aforesaid “quacks” a conspicuous or common
remedy (as Leuckart’s description had led me to infer), this nasty drug
is now rarely administered, and by the grossly ignorant only.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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