SUPPLEMENT 667 



Tsenia saginata. 



Occurs in the small intestine of man. It is characteristic of the 

 habit of life of this parasite that once it has become mature its 

 proglottides are dropped off daily in increasing numbers because 

 its growth is extraordinarily rapid. The joints are discharged 

 generally spontaneously during the whole day without a stool. An 

 extraordinarily unpleasant sensation is produced by the damp, cool 

 joints slipping down into one's lower garments and over one's legs 

 when walking ; women especially, in whom the proglottides slip 

 through their petticoats on to their legs, complain bitterly of this 

 troublesome symptom. Another unpleasant symptom is superadded 

 in the shape of the proglottides tickling the rectum, and this excites 

 irritable people to the last degree. Different species of tapeworms are 

 not mutually exclusive. B. latus and T. solium frequently occur side 

 by side, so also T. solium and T. saginata for instance, in a butcher's 

 assistant we once expelled twelve T. solium and one T, saginata at 

 the same time. The greatest number of Taeniae which have been 

 observed at one time amounted to forty T. solium (Kleefeld 1 ). 

 Even though the cysticercus of T. saginata is not, as in the case of 

 T. solium, particularly dangerous to man, a parasite, nevertheless, 

 which requires so much nutrient material during its rapid growth,, 

 and thereby sets up manifold disturbances in the general condition 

 of health, ought to be expelled as rapidly and thoroughly as possible. 



Tapeworms are found not uncommonly with other intestinal 

 parasites, such as Ascaris, Oxyuris, Trichocephalus or Ancylostoma. 

 Prunac 2 described a case in which a woman passed a Taenia through 

 the anus while she vomited a Fasciola hepatica. 



The symptomatology of these three large species of Cestodes r 

 Dibothriocephalus latus, Tania solium, and T. saginata, may very well 

 be summarized together, as, apart from some peculiarities, the clinical 

 symptoms, especially so far as their localization in the intestine is 

 concerned, are practically the same for all three species. In a large 

 number of cases the hosts have no suspicion whatever that they are 

 harbouring a tapeworm ; they feel quite well and free from any 

 disquieting symptoms whatever, and only become aware of the fact 

 that they are the carriers of a tapeworm when the discharge of the 

 segments takes place; on the other hand, it is often difficult to rid 

 people of the idea that they are harbouring a Taenia (Kiichenmeister 

 calls such Tania imaginata} ; usually it is undigested fibrous shreds- 

 of beefsteak which are regarded by the patients as proglottides of 

 taeniae. 



1 Kleefeld, see Seifert loc. cit. 



2 Prunac, see Eichhorst, " Handb. d. spez. Path. u. Theiap.,'' ii, p. 281. 



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