476 OCCURRENCE AND MEDICINAL SIGNIFICANCE. 



Occurrence and Medicinal Significance of Tsenia saginata. 



Tcenia saginata belongs, like Ascaris lumbricoides and Oxyuris 

 vermicularis, to the cosmopolitan parasites. It is found wherever the 

 ox is domesticated, and wherever its flesh forms an important or 

 prominent article of food. The frequency of the tape-worm, of course, 

 varies very much acroiding to the countries and districts in which it 

 is found. It depends upon the presence of the bladder-worm, and 

 thus ultimately upon the keeping and care of the ox, as well as on 

 the preparation of the flesh. In places where this is done without 

 sufficient care, and the flesh is eaten perhaps in a half-cooked or raw 

 condition, the tape-worm is naturally of very common occurrence. If, 

 in addition to this custom, the cattle be negligently tended, and if 

 uncleanliness prevail in the stable yard and house, it is easy to under- 

 stand that both young and old, it matters not of what sex or station 

 in life, will be infested by these parasites. 



Thus it was mentioned by Bruce, more than a century ago, that 

 the Abyssinians, whose morning occupation Schimper has so realisti- 

 cally described, eat raw flesh, and are consequently almost all infected 

 with tape-worm, and, as has already been noted, with Tcenia saginata. 1 

 Exceptions are extremely rare ; the worm appears even in children 

 of three or four, as soon as they begin, like their parents, to eat the 

 flesh "fresh and raw, and, if possible, still warm and quivering" 

 (Schimper). Even the Mohammedans and Europeans, who scorn to 

 live d I' Abyssinienne, are not entirely exempt from parasites, although 

 they are, of course, less exposed to them. Schimper himself was 

 attacked by them eight years after his settlement abroad. The 

 bladder -worms, or their heads, are distributed everywhere by the 

 universally prevailing uncleanliness, and the almost gipsy-like mode 

 of life of the inhabitants. Schimper conjectures that they are some- 

 times carried by flies. They adhere to table utensils to knives, 

 spoons, and plates and thus opportunities of infection are everywhere 

 afforded. And their distribution takes place all the more easily since 

 there are no sanitary commissions, no slaughter-houses, and no 

 butchers, but every one who wishes to eat flesh must kill the animal 

 upon his own premises. Only from <; a radical change in the degraded 

 social condition " does Schimper hope for any improvement. 



Further, the Abyssinians do not regard the tape-worm as entirely 

 an evil. They maintain, on the contrary, and Schimper agrees with 

 them from his own experience, that without this guest they would be 



1 This we learn not only from the descriptions given by Bilharz (Zeitschr. d. Gesellsch. 

 d. Aerztein Wien, I., No. 28, 1858), and by Schimper (in litt.), but from the investiga- 

 tions which Kiichenmeister made upon specimens sent by the former. 



