420 HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF T^NIA SAGINATA. 



for the common form with thick broad joints the Tcenia solium of 

 the ancients is as truly identical with this Tcenia dentata as with 

 the Botliriocephalus tropicus of Schmidtmiiller. 



Neither Nicolai nor Schmidtmiiller was able to make out a good 

 case for the specific distinctness of his worm. Their reports were 

 but little noticed, and for the most part, indeed, entirely overlooked, 

 so that the worms they had observed were, as before, referred to T. 

 solium if they were alluded to at all. 



This was the state of matters till, in 1852, Kiichemneister again 

 advanced the opinion that besides Tcenia solium there was another 

 large-jointed species to be distinguished in man. 1 Both were, he 

 said, well marked by distinctive and constant characters, partly in 

 shape, partly in the structure of the head and of the uterus. Only 

 one, the Tcenia solium, is provided with hooks ; the other, which is 

 also the larger and broader, is unarmed. 



If Ktichenrneister had been better acquainted with the literature 

 of Helminthology, and had consulted it more carefully, he would very 

 soon have learned that his discovery was not so new as he supposed, 

 but was rather only a confirmation and extension of observations 

 which would have been long since fully settled if the observers had 

 had a more rich and complete material to work upon. He would also 

 have learned that the species described by him as new, and named T. 

 mediocanellata, was nothing but the true T. solium* the "familiar" 

 tape-worm of the old helminthologists, the T. grandis saginata of 

 Goze. This fact is not in the least altered by the circumstance 

 that later zoologists have, in opposition to the common use of the 

 term, come to refer the designation Solium to the flat transparent 

 form (T.plana pellucida of Goze) first clearly defined by Linne". This 

 is mainly due to the influence of Kudolphi, who, in Greifswald and 

 Berlin, was able to procure only the latter form, 3 and was thus misled 

 into the supposition that the long-jointed tape- worms of man belonged 

 one and all to the same species. 



Strictly speaking, then, Kiichenmeister's T. mediocanellata should 

 be called T. solium ; but it would thus be necessary to find a new 



1 See especially, "Ueber die Cestoden im Allgemeinen und die des Menschen insbe- 

 sondere," p. 85 et seq., Zittau, 1853, and " Parasiten," Bd. i., p. 82, Leipzig, 1855. 

 The third species mentioned in the latter passage " the Tcenia from the Cape of Good 

 Hope " has been withdrawn since I recognised it as merely a malformation. 



2 The Tcenia lata mentioned by Kuchenmeister can scarcely be referred to T. media- 

 canellata. It is, as we have shown, merely our modern Bothrioceplialus, erroneously 

 credited with the head of T. saginata. 



3 That Rudolphi had also seen the true Tcenia solium (T. saginata), may be inferred 

 from his record of two specimens which were, on account of their size, ranked beside the 

 T. rulgaris of Werner, " Entoz. hist, nat.," t. ii., p. 76. 



