86 PROPHYLACTIC MEASUKES. 



same time receiving a packet of cusso to remove his tape-worm. 

 That the flesh of our cattle affords the principal opportunity for 

 the immigration of the Tcenia solium into man, is borne out by 

 the experience of Reinlein, 1 a physician of Vienna ; who for ten 

 successive years professionally attended the Carthusian monks, 

 who never partake of either meat or milk, but live mostly on 

 fish ; he had never seen a single person who had suffered from 

 tape-worms, and was assured by the oldest fathers that they never 

 remembered any of their associates to have been troubled with 

 them. 



But it is not alone in the torrid and temperate zones of our 

 globe that man is visited by these parasites, for even in the polar 

 regions the cestoids find means of reaching him. Dr. Schleisner, 

 who a few years ago published a medical topography of the island 

 of Iceland/ makes mention of an epidemic liver complaint or 

 hydatid disease which made great ravages among the Ice- 

 landers. In the short account of this complaint, which is 

 more commonly met with in the interior of the country than on 

 the coast, I recognise a tape-worm which is imbedded not only in 

 the livers, but also in the abdominal organs and in the skin of 

 these islanders. Professor Eschricht, of Copenhagen, wrote to me 

 lately that the sixth part of the whole population of Iceland 

 suffered from this disorder of the liver, and that with many of 

 them, after dreadful and protracted sufferings, it terminates in 

 death. From a more particular description and illustration of 

 this disease produced by the tape-worm, for which I am indebted 

 to the kindness of Eschricht, I conclude that the parasite is one of 

 the Cysticerci, and has its origin in the T&nia serrata (solium) . In 

 Copenhagen, people's attention has already been drawn to this 

 cestoid disease, so highly fatal to the Icelandic population, and 

 they appear to be desirous of taking energetic measures for its 

 prevention. I entertain the belief that, bearing in mind the 

 natural history of the Cysticerci as I have represented it in these 

 pages, it may be possible to prevent the immigration of the 

 cestoid young to which, from the Icelanders' mode of life, they 



1 See his ' Bemerkungen iiber den Ursprung, die Entwickelung, die Ursachen, Symp- 

 tome und Heilart des breiten Bandwurmes in den Gedarmen des Menschen/ Vienna, 

 1812, p. 25. 



2 See his ' Forsbg til en Nosographie of Island,' Kjobenhavn, 1849 A short abstract 

 of this work will be found in ' Janus/ the ' Central-Magazin fur Geschichte und Literar- 

 Geschichte der Medizin,' vol. i, 1851, p. 300. 



