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
only permit, as obtains in the province of Modena, the melting down of
the fat of hogs. Very strict measures of this sort would, as he says,
constitute a radical means of entirely stamping out _Tænia_, but he also
very judiciously reminds the sanitarian (_igienista_) that “such a step
would be a serious thing for the tradesman, bringing injury not only
to the municipal administration, but also proving an encouragement to
smuggling. In this way the public health would sustain worse injury by
the inducement held out to the owners of infected animals to slaughter
them in secret butcheries, thus little by little withdrawing the meat
from the superintendence of the public officials. By the adoption of
fraudulent measures there would be a daily consumption of diseased
meat; and thus also, while the public administration would suffer loss,
the public health, on the other hand, would gain nothing.” In effect
Pellizzari says, if we advise the employment of more severe and radical
measures than those already in vogue in Florence, we should overburden
the tradesman, almost compel him to defraud the exchequer by smuggling,
and greatly injure the public health.
The facts and explanations advanced by Italian writers regarding the
causes of the endemic prevalence of tapeworm, are in perfect harmony
with those previously obtained from other sources. Respecting these
causes there is much that is both new and interesting. The eighth
annual report of the sanitary commissioner of the Government of India
had already made us acquainted with the fact that during the year 1869,
out of 13,818 head of cattle slaughtered in the stations of the Upper
Punjab, 768 beasts were found to be infected with measle-cysts. This,
as I have remarked (Tommasi’s edit., p. 54), “affords a rate of 5·55
per cent., being a considerable diminution of the proportion observed
in 1868, when the percentage gave a total of 6·12. The reduction was,
without doubt, due to the vigilance and enlightenment of the army meat
inspectors. The prevalence, however, of tapeworm does not bear relation
to the number of animals infested with Cysticerci so much as to the
actual number of Cysticerci developed in infected animals. I have
frequently pointed out the inadvisability of condemning and burying
the carcases of measly oxen, whether there be few or many Cysticerci
present, and I have stated, on trustworthy evidence, that even the
presence of a few Cysticerci is deemed by some inspectors a sufficient
reason for rejecting the entire animal. Such a waste should never be
allowed. In regard to the numbers of ox-measles present in particular
instances, I have elsewhere adduced some remarkable facts communicated
to me by Dr Joseph Fleming, of the Indian Army Medical Staff. None of
my experimental animals, though fed with scores of ripe proglottides,
yielded such an abundance of Cysticerci as Dr Fleming encountered in
Punjab cattle. In one pound weight of the psoas muscles Fleming counted
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