TAPEWORMS. 41 



little chance of procuring an entirely satisfactory 

 result. However, the patient's friends brought me 



no less than nine separate fragments of Tania 

 mediocanellata ; and these collectively measured 

 rather more than the same number of feet in 

 length. Finding her general health to have suf- 

 fered considerably, I ordered a tonic and altera- 

 tives, at the same time forbidding the re- employ- 

 ment of vermifuges for the present. At the expira- 

 tion of three weeks there was a very decided im- 

 provement ; but towards the close of the year her 

 health began to fail again, and tapeworm segments 

 reappeared in the stools. Coming to town to be 

 finally placed under my care early in the present 

 year, I found her in a weakly state, but not too low 

 to undergo treatment. After a brief interval, I 

 ordered three drachms of the powdered areca nut, 

 which, though combined with a few grains of 

 scammony, required to be followed by the exhibition 

 of a brisk saline cathartic. These active agents 

 eventually dislodged four feet of a remarkably 

 broad tapeworm ; but I was dissatisfied with the 

 exceedingly tedious manner in which this still living 

 moiety of the parasite had come away. Repeating 

 the areca nut without further effect, I returned to 

 my favourite remedy, and, with an efficiently pre- 

 scribed dose of male-fern, followed by a powerful 

 purgative, dislodged the remainder of the parasite 

 quite dead. The head was found. 



