CESTODA 83 



tion to our knowledge of the limits assigned by nature to the 

 epoch of larval activity is not merely one of abstract scientific 

 interest, but it has important practical bearings, inasmuch as it 

 points out in what way an entire herd of cattle (known to 

 be measled by the post-mortem examination of one animal 

 previously selected for the purpose, or for that matter, by 

 the rather barbarous act of excising and examining a frag- 

 ment of the muscle of a living one) may be freed of its 

 parasitic guests ; and it also shows how all risk of propagating 

 tapeworm, apart from the question of subjecting the flesh 

 to a certain temperature, may be effectually prevented. The 

 stockowner has but to remove his animals for six or eight months 

 to localities where no fresh infection can occur, when, at the 

 expiration of the time mentioned, all those Cysticerci that 

 existed in the beasts at the time of the transfer will have perished. 

 The flesh of the animals .may then be eaten with impunity, 

 whether well cooked or raw. This is an important teaching 

 deducible from experimental inquiry, and I am rather surprised 

 that it has hitherto escaped the notice of persons who, though 

 they affect to ignore the value of scientific researches, are 

 particularly anxious to parade their practical knowledge, which, 

 unhappily, too often proves a mere cloak for ignorance. 



The memoir by Giacomini already quoted (p. 65) affords inter- 

 esting details respecting a case in which there was a most un- 

 usual degree of infection of the human body by Cysticerci. Dr 

 Giacomini instituted a searching comparison between the human 

 measles procured by himself and those of the pig sent to him 

 by Professor Perroncito. In the human Cysticerci he noticed a 

 greater adherence of the capsule to the enclosed measle, and 

 he also observed that while the human measle-heads either 

 displayed thirty-two, or in some few cases thirty-four hooks, in 

 two differently sized circles of fifteen or sixteen each, the pig- 

 measles, on the other hand, carried only twenty-four hooks to 

 the double circle of equal circumference -, consequently the hooks 

 appeared to be more crowded together in the human parasite. 

 This fact, Giacomini remarks, does not of itself constitute 

 an essential specific difference, since variations of the kind not 

 unfrequently occur in Cysticerci occupying one and the same 

 host. Even the beef-measle is not necessarily confined to one 

 species of host, since Zenker has succeeded in rearing it in a 

 goat. 



Although the substance of the above-recorded conclusions 



