246 ENTO-PARASITES AND HYGIENE. 



dogs is a wide-spread bad habit. Kissing dogs or being 

 licked by them is indulged in as a special treat by many 

 people of the fair as well as the stern sex, and the con- 

 sequences are only natural. How may we find the de- 

 sirable protection? As a rule worms found during the 

 slaughtering of cattle should be carefully destroyed, not 

 simply thrown away where they will find new oppor- 

 tunities of infecting other individuals, but burned. 



The cysticercus of taenia solium, called cysticercus 

 cellulosse, has at first its seat in the muscles and other 

 organs (tongue, brains, heart, diaphragm) of pigs. It 

 makes its appearance there often in great numbers, be- 

 cause those animals frequently devour whole tape-worm 

 joints together with the eggs therein. The muscles then 

 look as if studded with pearls, and it is astonishing how 

 the animal can live with such an infection. This cysti- 

 cercus meets favorable conditions for development not 

 only in the pig but also in man, and has in this case the 

 dangerous inclination to locate in the eye or in the brain, 

 thus, of course, destroying the power of vision in the 

 first case, and causing epilepsy, convulsions, lameness, 

 etc., in the latter, in short, it often causes severe and 

 dangerous suffering. These cysticerci are taken up in 

 the usual way by infecting one's self with the eggs of 

 taenia which may stick to the hands of a friend or fly 

 around with the dust. Such a friend harboring a taenia 

 solium should be declared a "nuisance" and made 

 harmless. 



Other tape-worms possess only one or a few interme- 

 diate hosts, and these are represented by animals which 

 form the chief food of the final host, for the young 

 parasites have a better opportunity to enter the system 

 of a carnivorous animal and develop there when their 

 intermediate host is devoured by the other. On the 

 other hand the germs which the final host strews out 

 everywhere and at all times are especially deposited 



184: 



