638 OCCURRENCE AND MEDICAL IMPORTANCE. 



every seventh individual suffers from this disease, it has gradually 

 been established by means of more accurate statistics that these early 

 statements were exaggerated. 1 According to the reports of the medical 

 officer Finsen, who, in his district, which comprehended a seventh 

 part of the whole island, had a yearly average of between 700 and 

 800 patients, there were among that number twenty-four persons in- 

 fected with Echinococcus, and thus about 3 per cent. Among the 

 10,000 inhabitants of this district, he knew altogether 119 Echinococcus 

 patients (about 1/2 per cent.), and this of course without taking into 

 account those in whom the development of the parasite had not } r et 

 given rise to pathological disturbances ; when we further consider 

 that it is probable, especially in regard to the more remote parts of 

 the district, that all the patients had not come to the knowledge of 

 the physician, the number of the real Echinococcus patients in Finsen's 

 district (in the north of Iceland) may be estimated at about 2 per 

 cent, of the population. It certainly appears as though the Echino- 

 coccus were more frequent in some of the agricultural districts, and 

 especially in the east of Iceland, but Krabbe has shown that this pre- 

 ponderance is almost compensated by the relative rarity of the para- 

 site in those neighbourhoods where there is more fishery and trade, as 

 in Keykjavik, so that the total number of the Icelandic patients can 

 hardly be estimated at more than 1500 ( T V) of the population. Still 

 that is a very large number, much larger at any rate than is found 

 anywhere else. 



In Iceland JZchinococcus-\)}&ddeTS are much more frequent in oxen 

 and sheep than in man ; a but, although present in considerable 

 numbers in these animals, they hardly ever attain the same size as in 

 man, and as they frequently shrivel up and calcify, they do not 

 cause such important disturbances of health. 



As the inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the rearing of cattle, the 

 number of these animals is so great that there are eleven for every 

 man, as opposed to 1/8 in the kingdom of Denmark ; and, as the flesh 

 of the slaughtered animals is usually handled in a very careless, dis- 

 orderly, and uncleanly manner, it is not difficult to believe that 

 Tcenia echinococcus is of most frequent occurrence among the dogs. 



1 On this subject see in Ugeslcriftfor Lager (1862-66), a paper on the Icelandic Echino- 

 cocci, which is translated by Krabbe in Archiv f. pathol. Anat., Bd. xxvii., p. 225, and 

 one on the Echinococci of the Icelanders, Archiv f. Naturyesch., Th. i., p. 110, 1865. 

 [This subject has been recently treated by Fonassen ("Echinokokkensygdomen belyst ved 

 Islandske Lsegers Erfaring : " Kjobenhavn, 1882), who estimates the number of patients 

 on the average at 1'3 per cent, of the population. R. L.] 



2 Hjaltalin, who, in 1870 (Dobell, "Report on Iceland," London, 1870) still main- 

 tained that one-sixth to one -seventh of the population suffered from Echinococcus, estimates 

 the number of sheep infected with the parasite at one-fourth. 



