CESTODA 125 



between the peasantry and their canine companions is the 

 primary source of the endemic ; and where dogs are not kept, 

 it is well nigh impossible that the disease should be contracted. 

 The fact that every Icelandic peasant possesses, on an average, 

 six dogs, and that these dogs share the same dwelling (eating 

 off the same plates and enjoying many other privileges of 

 intimate relationship) sufficiently explains the frequency of 

 hydatids in that country. According to Krabbe, the sexually 

 mature Tffiniae occur in 28 p. c. of Icelandic dogs, whereas in 

 Copenhagen he found it twice only in 500 dogs examined. In 

 his work (quoted below, p. 58, or Fr. Edit., p. 60) Krabbe 

 comments on a sensational passage which, in my introductory 

 treatise (p. 283), I had quoted from a popular memoir by 

 Leuckart ( ( Unsere Zeit/ s. 654, 1862). The practitioners 

 whom we had spoken of as " quacks " are mostly homoeopaths ; 

 and it appears that even those who are not in any legal sense 

 professional men " treat their patients much in the same way 

 as ordinary medical men/' It simply comes to this, that, 

 instead of dog's excrement forming with the aforesaid " quacks " 

 a conspicuous or common remedy (as Leuckart's description had 

 led me to infer), this nasty drug is now rarely administered, 

 and by the grossly ignorant only. 



Up to the present time no person has seen the Taenia echino- 

 coccus in any English dog which has not been previously made 

 the subject of experiment, but considering the prevalence of 

 hydatid disease amongst us, there can be no doubt that 

 English dogs are quite as much if not more infested than conti- 

 nental ones. Probably, at least one per cent, of our dogs harbour 

 the mature tapeworm. Certainly a great deal of good might 

 accrue from the acquisition of more extended evidence respect- 

 ing the prevalence of this and other forms of entozoa infesting 

 man and animals in this country. 



From Schleisner's table it appears that hydatids are more 

 frequent in women than in men. Apparently, it is not so in 

 Australia. As regards Iceland the explanation must be sought 

 for in the different habits of life. No doubt, water used as drink 

 by women is constantly obtained from supplies in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of dwellings, and in localities to which dogs 

 have continual access. The comparative rarity of the echino- 

 coccus disease amongst sailors is not so much dependent upon 

 the circumstance that seamen's diet usually consists of salted 

 provisions, as upon the fact that these men can seldom have 



