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notions on this point ; and still less should I think 

 it fair by my silence to appear to endorse his 

 rather nauseating statement to the effect, "that 

 every person who is shown to be infested with 

 those very common entozoa, Oxyuris vermicularis 

 and Trichocephalus dispar, is thereby demonstrated 

 to have swallowed minute portions of his own or 

 another person's faeces." I respectfully submit that 

 this is putting the case too strongly. No doubt 

 the eggs of oxyurides swallowed by ourselves must 

 have previously passed through some person's rec- 

 tum; as such, either separately or mayhap collec- 

 tively, in the body of the maternal parasite. That 

 does not, however, justify Dr. Ransom's unpleasant 

 statement, to the effect that we must " have swal- 

 lowed" particles of our own or of some other person's 

 excrement. The eggs are not to be regarded as 

 constituent portions of the faecal matter, but rather 

 as the products of the legitimate inhabitants of the 

 human intestinal territory. Even should you still 

 maintain the old notion, that they are "foreign 

 bodies," that would not entitle them to be called 

 " minute portions " of the fseces. Perhaps Dr. 

 Ransom will say that the surfaces of these eggs, 

 being in contact with faecal matter, must carry 

 infinitesimal portions of the fascal matter on their 

 surfaces, and it is to such invisible particles that he 

 refers. As however a large proportion of the ova 

 escape with their parents, whilst they are still 



