CHAPTER XXIV 



COXTKOL OF AXIMAL PARASITES 



1. To what i.s liookworin disease due ■• Describe the worm. 2. What are 

 the symptoms? 3. IIow is the disease spread'? 4. Give the life histoiy of 

 the hookworm from the time the egg is hiid until tlie worm is back in the 

 intestine. 5. Can the disease be cured ? Which is better, cure or preven- 

 tion ? 0. How can it be prevented ? 7. Suppose you had charge of a hook- 

 worm patient, describe your treatment and precautions. 8. Wliat can 

 school rliildren do to eradicate, the disease in Essex County? — From a 

 (juiz given in a Virginia high school 



With this as a part of public-school work for boys muI girls, one might 

 be tempted to call the disease a blessing ; for what else could have brought 

 the old "education"' on such a long journey toward connnon sense? Of 

 course it will not stop with this particular subject. It will deal more and 

 more with the kinds of subjects that have to do with healthful living hen- 

 and now. IIow whimsical Fate is, that we should be mightily lielped to the 

 right kind of schools in the United States by an intestinal parasite that poi- 

 soned tlie Pharaohs! — Walter H. Pa(;k, "The Hookworm and Civiliza- 

 tion,'' The WorhVii Work; Vol. XXIV (P)12), pp. 515 ff. 



But that the nKASipiito bite not only annoys but may kill, l»y infecting 

 the punctured tissues with the germs of malaria or yellow fever or lilaria.sis. 

 three of the most wide-spread and fatal diseases of man. — tiiis alarming 

 fact is a matter which has come to be really recognized only recently, and 

 the general recognition of which has given to the i)ractical study of insects 

 an importance which years of warning and protesting by economic ento- 

 mologists have been wholly unable to do. ... In addition 1 may simi»ly 

 say, when in malarial regions avoid the bite of a mosciuito as you would 

 tliat of a rattlesnake. One may be (piite as serious in it^s results as the other. 

 — Kkllooo, "American Insects." pp. 80.S. (580 



Importance. Tlic world ovci, it is (|iiite wiiliiii tlic miigc 

 of possibility that animal parasites arc sappini^- half the life- 

 blood and strength of the human lace, and many other 

 plant and animal species are similarly alllicted. 'Hiis one 

 parasite, the hookworm, belts the Wdrld between '■W>° north 



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