232 PARASITES OP MAN 



times there are obscure symptoms simulating those of local 

 organic disease. 



About the treatment of the disorder I have nothing to say 

 here, further than to urge the benefits of the preventive 

 measure of cleanliness. Like Zenker and Heller, I have ob- 

 tained the eggs of oxyurides from beneath the finger-nails of 

 young people. In one lad all the nails had been carefully 

 bitten down to their roots, but from beneath a minute project- 

 ing portion that was left on the right fourth-finger I procured 

 two eggs. Their demonstration under the microscope con- 

 vinced both parent and child of the necessity of frequently 

 employing local and general ablutions. Personal cleanliness is 

 essential. In this connection an able biologist has ventured to 

 hazard a statement to the effect that " probably any infected 

 person who adopted the requisite precautions against reinfection 

 from himself or others would get well in a few weeks without 

 treatment by drugs." Dr Ransom bases his belief on the 

 known facts of the life-history of this entozoon, as recorded 

 more especially by Leuckart. I regret that I cannot fully 

 share Dr. Ransom's views, and still less should I think it right 

 by my silence to seem to endorse his statement to the effect 

 "that every person who is shown to be infested with those very 

 common entozoa, Oxyuris ve'rmicularis and Trichoceplialus dispar, 

 is thereby demonstrated to have swallowed minute portions of 

 his own or another person's faeces." This is putting the case 

 too strongly. No doubt the eggs of oxyurides swallowed by 

 ourselves must have previously passed through some person's 

 rectum ; as such, either separately or mayhap collectively, in 

 the body of the maternal parasite. That does not, however, 

 justify the statement, that we " have swallowed " part of our 

 own or of some other person's excrement. The eggs ought not 

 to be regarded as constituent portions of the faecal matter. Per- 

 haps Dr Ransom will say that the surfaces of these eggs, being 

 in contact with faecal matter, must carry infinitesimal particles 

 on their surfaces, and it is to such that he refers. As, however, 

 a large proportion of the ova escape with their parents, whilst 

 they are still lodged within the maternal worm, it cannot be held 

 that these intra-uterine ova carry faecal matter on their shells. 

 Commonly the eggs are swallowed in the separate, free, and dry 

 state. In water they perish quickly. The act of eating with 

 unwashed hands is a fertile source of infection, more especially 

 if the meal be taken either in bed or in the bedroom. 



