Maech 4, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



349 



meant to be the basis from tlie beginning, 

 nothing would have been easier than to say so ; 

 if it was not, then it was absolutely honorable, 

 right and proper for any man to avail himself 

 of the retiring allowance offered him without 

 reference to any question of disability. If an 

 error was made in the first place, rectify it by 

 all means ; but first stand by the consequences 

 of your error, to the extent demanded by the 

 ordinary standards of honorable conduct be- 

 tween man and man. An absolutely essential 

 requirement of a properly constituted univer- 

 sity pension system is that it shall not place 

 upon the professor any sense of obligation 

 other than what is inevitable and inherent in 

 such a system ; he must feel that he has earned 

 his pension, just as he has earned his salary, 

 by his past services. If to retire under a pen- 

 sion is to mean to retire under a censorship, 

 the Carnegie Foundation may conduce to the 

 material comfort, but will certainly not con- 

 duce to the dignity or the self-respect of the 

 profession of university teaching. And, to 

 come back to the main point, the homely ob- 

 ligation of fulfilling in a reasonable measure 

 substantial expectations that have been raised 

 by one's own declared intentions is a duty 

 antecedent even to the high purposes to which 

 the Carnegie Foundation is dedicated. — New 

 York Evening Post. 



I 



SPECIAL ARTICLES 

 DIPTLIDIUM CANmUM IN AN AMERICAN CHILD 



In May, 1909, Dr. Luzerne Coville, of Ith- 

 aca, submitted for examination egg packets 

 and a segment of a parasitic worm which had 

 been passed by a boy of eleven years. The seg- 

 ment, which had lain in water for some time, 

 I did not recognize, and I am indebted to Dr. 

 C. W. Stiles for the suggestion that the egg 

 packets probably belonged to a tapeworm of 

 the genus Dipylidium. 



A short time later another segment, reddish- 

 brown from the enclosed mature egg packets, 

 was discharged and egg masses were found on 

 toilet paper, appearing to casual inspection 

 like blood stains. Careful examination proved 

 them to be of the double-pored tapeworm of 

 the dog, Dipylidium caninum. The standard 



vermifuges were administered and for two 

 days the stools were sieved without result. It 

 is evident that but a single worm was present 

 and that it was discharged before the some- 

 what delayed treatment was commenced. 



Dipylidium caninum (more generally known 

 as Tcenia canina L., T. cucumerina Bl. or T. 

 elliptica Batsch) is the commonest tapeworm 

 of pet dogs and cats. At Copenhagen, Krabbe 

 found 78 per cent, of the dogs and 60 per 

 cent, of the cats infested. "Ward,^ 1895, states 

 that it has been found in one fifth to four 

 fifths of all the dogs examined by various 

 European investigators and that it is hardly 

 less common at Lincoln, Nebr. ; I have found 

 it common at Ithaca, though I have not made 

 enough examinations to justify a statement 

 in percentages. 



On the other hand, it is only accidentally a 

 parasite of man, and instances of its occur- 

 rence as such have been regarded as rare. 

 First reported in 1751, by Dubois,^ a student 

 of Linneus, Zschokke,^ in 1903, was able to 

 bring together reports of thirty-four cases. 

 All these were European, and Ward,* 1900, 

 found no references to the occurrence of the 

 parasite in man in this country. However, 

 Stiles,' 1903, reports a case of infestation of 

 a child sixteen months old, at Detroit. 

 Blanchard," 1907, in an exhaustive review of 

 the subject, summarizes sixty cases, of which 



' Ward, H. B., " The Parasitic Worms of Man 

 and the Domestic Animals," Eept. Nebr. State 

 Board Agr. for 1894, pp. 225-348. 



' Dubois, G., " Tienia." Linncei Amcenitates 

 academiccB, Eolmtw, 1751, II., p. 59. (Cited by 

 Blanchard, TraiU de zool. med., I., p. 481, 1888.) 



= Zschokke, F., " Ein neuer Fall von Dipylidium 

 caninum (L.) beim Mensohen," Centralbl. f. Bakt., 

 etc., I. Abt., Originale, XXXIV., pp. 42-43, 1903. 



■* Ward, H. B., article " Cestoda," " Reference 

 Handbook of the Medical Sciences," II., pp. 779- 

 794, 1900. 



' Stiles, C. W., " A Case of Infection with the 

 Double-pored Dog Tapeworm {Dipylidium cani- 

 num) in an American Child," Amer. Medicine, 

 v., pp. 65-66, 1903. 



° Blanchard, R., " Parasitisme du Dipylidium 

 caninum dans I'espSce humaine, a propos d'un cas 

 nouveau," Arcliiv. de Parasit., XI., pp. 439-471. 



