CHAPTER XXIV 



CONTROL OF ANIMAL PARASITES 



1. To what is hookworm disease due ? Describe the worm. 2. What are 

 tUe symptoms? 3. How is the disease spread? 4. Give the life history of 

 tiie hookworm from the time the egg is laid until the worm is back in the 

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

 tion ? 6. How can it be prevented ? 7. Suppose you had charge of a hook- 

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

 s-t'hool children do to eradicate the disease in Essex County? From a 

 <[iiiz given in a Virginia high school 



With this as a part of public-school work for boys and 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 common 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 here 

 ;ind now. How whimsical Fate is, that we should be mightily helped to the 

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

 .soned the Pharaohs! WALTER H. PAGE, "The Hookworm and Civiliza- 

 tion," The World's Work, Vol. XXIV (1912), pp. 515 ff. 



But that the mosquito bite not only annoys but may kill, by infecting 

 .he punctured tissues with the germs of malaria or yellow fever or lilariasis, 

 diree of the most wide-spread and fatal diseases of man, this alarming- 

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

 the general recognition of which has given to the practical study of insects 

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

 mologists have been wholly unable to do. ... In addition I may simply 

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

 that of a rattlesnake. One may be quite as serious in its results as the other. 

 KELLOGG, "American Insects," pp. 303, 630 



Importance. The world over, it is quite within the range 

 of possibility that animal parasites are sapping half the life- 

 blood and strength of the human race, and many other 

 plant and animal species are similarly afflicted. This one 

 parasite, the hookworm, belts the world between 36 north 



253 



