730 DISTRIBUTION AND MEDICINAL SIGNIFICANCE. 



lation of the Swedish province of Nordbotten no one, whether rich or 

 poor, old or young, is exempt, not even unweaned children. Further 

 inland in this case also the worm becomes gradually less frequent, and 

 at the distance of some miles hardly an instance is found. We are 

 also informed by Schauinsland that on the Kurische Nehrung hardly 

 one of the fisher-folk is free from the worm. In St. Petersburg the 

 number of the Bothriocephalus patients is estimated at 15 per cent., 

 and at Dorpat Szydlowski 1 found the eggs of the parasite in 10 per 

 cent, of the faeces examined. 



It seems that the worm is also very widely distributed in the 

 interior of Eussia. We know of its occurrence in Poland, as well as 

 in the southern provinces, where Pallas had already observed it, 

 The dwellers on the shore of a lake near Kasan are said to be 

 afflicted by it with special severity (Knoch). In Moscow, on the 

 other hand, the parasite occurs but rarely. Of 200 tape-worm 

 patients chronicled by Krabbe, 2 noted in Denmark, twenty were 

 infected with Bothriocephalus. Most of them came from Zealand, in 

 which island, and especially in Soro, the worm is anything but rare. 

 In France and Italy 3 Bothriocephalus is found principally in the 

 regions near Switzerland. It was observed in Holland by van 

 Doeveren, and in Belgium by Spiegel, but apparently * has not since 

 been noted in either of these countries. The occurrence of Bothrio- 

 cephalus in Germany is mainly limited to the coast regions of eastern 

 Prussia and Pomerania, but some cases, which are to all appearance 

 autochthonic, have been noted in Hamburg, Berlin, Mainz, and 

 Munich. A very interesting communication on this subject is 

 made by Bellinger, 5 according to whom Bothriocephalus lotus has, 

 during the last four or five years, been observed no fewer than eight 

 times in Munich (among twenty-seven cases of tape-worm), and 

 exclusively in persons who, for some time before the appearance of 

 the parasite, had not left Munich, and who, in the majority of 

 instances (in five), were known to have resided on the banks of Lake 

 Starenberg. As no similar cases were observed at an earlier period, 



1 "Beitrage zur Mikroskopie der Faeces," Inaugural-Dissert., Dorpat, 1879, p. 51. 



a "Om Forkomsten af Bandelonne hos Mennesket i Damnark," Nord. med. Archiv, 

 Bd. xii., No. 23, 1880. 



a Of fifty-seven cases of tape-worm which E. Parona observed in Varese, thirteen 

 were due to Bothriocephalus, twelve to Tcenia solium, and twenty-six to T. saginata 

 (Giornale Reed Accad. di med. di Torino, Marzo 1882). Regarding the occurrence of 

 Bothriocephalus in the north of Italy, see also Perroncito, " Parassiti dell'uomo et degli 

 animali utili," 1882, p. 250. 



* My esteemed friend Ed. van Beneden has just written to me of a young girl in 

 Verviers who voided a Bothriocephalus, although (with the exception of a day spent in 

 Aix-la-Chapelle) she had never left the place of her birth. 



6 Deutsches Archiv f. klin. Med., Bd. xxxvi., p. 277, 1885. 



