CESTODES 133 



found a " leticomam " in the Cysticercus tenuicollis, the larva of 

 Tcenia marginata, which causes urticaria and other toxic symp- 

 toms when injected into animals. The fluids of Cysticercus 

 pisiformis (the common cestode of rabbits) have been found 

 toxic for frogs, and Vaullegeard 1 has determined the presence 

 of an " alkaloid " and a " ferment toxin " in this fluid. The 

 fluids of the cysts of Ccenurus cerebralis, Ccenurus serialis, and 

 Echinococcus polymorphous have all been found toxic, and it is 

 probable that this is a general rule with the cestodes, 2 but 

 human forms other than the echinococcus seem not to have been 

 investigated ; 3 according to Jammes and Mandoul, extracts of 

 taenia are bactericidal. 



Dibothriocephalus latus frequently causes anemia, which 

 has been attributed to a poison liberated by the parasite when 

 it undergoes disintegration, and possibly as a secretion of the 

 living worm. 4 All the intestinal cestodes are equipped with a 

 well-developed excretory apparatus, and it is easy to imagine 

 that their excretory products may be toxic to the animal into 

 whose intestine they are excreted. Schauman and Tallqvist 5 

 found that extracts from these worms were toxic to dogs how- 

 ever administered, and caused a marked anemia ; in the test- 

 tube these extracts were hemolytic. 



Rosenqvist 6 has studied the metabolism of twenty-one cases 

 of bothriocephalus anemia, and found evidence in nearly all of 

 a toxogenic destruction of proteid, which ceases promptly when 

 the worms are removed. He has found that these worms pro- 

 duce a poison which is globulicidal, and probably also generally 

 cytotoxic, since in the anemias that they produce, the elimination 

 of purin bodies of tissue origin (endogenous purin) is increased. 

 The nitrogenous metabolism is quite the same in pernicious 

 anemia and in bothriocephalus anemia. Isaac and v. d. Velden 7 

 state that the blood of patients infected with this parasite gives a 

 precipitin reaction with autolytic fluid obtained from bothrio- 

 cephalus, and that rabbits immunized with such autolytic fluids 

 developed a precipitin. 



Other Taenia. There is much less evidence that other forms 

 of tsenia produce toxic substances which injure their host, 

 although the clinical manifestations observed in persons harboring 

 tsenia are often of such a nature as to indicate strongly an 

 intoxication. Jammes and Mandoul 8 found no toxic manifesta- 



1 Bull. Soc. linne'enne de Normandie, 1 901 (4), 84. 



2 Blanchard., foe eit. 3 Semaine meU, 1905 (25), 55. 



4 Literature by Blanchard, loc. tit. 5 Deut. med. Woch., 1898 (24), 312. 

 6 Zeit klin. Med., 1903 (49), 193. 7 Deut. med. Woch., 1904 (30), 982. 

 8 Corapt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1904 (138), 1734. 



