532 OCCURRENCE AND RESULTS OF T^NIA SOLIUM. 



But it is not necessary to quote these cases of perverse gluttony 

 in order to prove that the bladder-worms of raw pork, just like those 

 of beef, frequently find an entrance into man and produce the tape- 

 worm. Statistics also abundantly show that those persons whose 

 position and vocation oblige them to handle raw meat, or to taste 

 little portions before it is perfectly cooked, are as often afflicted by 

 Tcenia solium as by T. saginata. 1 Of Krabbe's fifty-three cases no 

 fewer than forty-two belonged to the female sex, and only eleven to 

 the male. 2 The occupation and position of these persons could not 

 always be ascertained, but so far as it was possible to do so, it ap- 

 peared that half of the female patients were housemaids and kitchen- 

 maids. So far as the age could be learned, three-fourths of all the 

 patients were between twenty and forty. In children under ten (and 

 Krabbe observed the worm even in some three or four years of age) 

 the two sexes seemed equally liable. 



The circumstance that Krabbe's lists contain a relatively large 

 number of Germans, is explained by the author in a letter to be due 

 to the fact that the latter, even in foreign countries, adhere to their 

 custom of eating raw flesh and fresh sausage, and of usually procuring 

 the latter in small quantities from the butcher's shop. The same is 

 asserted of the Germans in Paris, among whom the tape-worm also 

 seems to occur with unusual frequency. 3 



The counterpart to this is furnished by the fact that among thirty- 

 five Tocnice which Marchi collected in Florence within a certain time, 

 he only found a single T. solium, although during that time no fewer 

 than 13,000 measly swine had been imported and eaten. 4 



The almost entire immunity of the inhabitants of Florence from T. 

 solium is due, as is shown by Pellizzari, to the circumstance that with 

 them pork is never eaten raw like beef (from which they get Tcenia 

 saginatd), but is always carefully cooked. By cooking the bladder- 

 worms are almost sure to be killed, and at any rate much more fre- 

 quently and thoroughly than the Trichinae, which, as is well-known, 

 only die at a temperature of about 60 C. (140 F.), while the former 

 generally perish at 47 C. and 48, and hardly ever survive 49 

 (120 F.). 



1 The similarity of the conditions of infection also explains the fact that both kinds of 

 tape-worms not unfrequently occur at the same time in the same individual. Such cases 

 have been observed by Krabbe, Miiller, and Heller ; by the latter in a butcher. 



2 M tiller's reports, notwithstanding the small number of cases, also leave no doubt 

 that Tcenia solium is more frequent in women than in men. 



3 Lancereaux, Arch. g6n6r. mtd., t. xx., p. 553. 



* Pellizzari and Cobbold, "Parasiti interni degli Animali domestic!," Trad, dal 

 Tommasi, Append., p. 172. On the authority of this, Kiichenmeister states that 13,000 

 kilos of measly pork are consumed yearly in Florence. 



