114 ANIMAL PARASITES. 



Jews and Mohammedans, who live strictly according to their reli- 

 gious precepts, and who are not deprived of the opportunity of 

 procuring their meat from " clean" butchers' shops in which pork 

 is never sold, and also amongst the Abyssinian Carthusians referred 

 to by Reinlein, 1 who keep a strict fast and only feed on fish, or 

 where, in consequence of the breeding of pigs being given up, 

 these animals are almost entirely absent, as Eschricht tell us is 

 the case in Iceland, where, in consequence, Tania solium is very 

 rare. But, on the other hand, Ave find this Tania verv abundaut 

 wherever the breeding of pigs flourishes, as in Poland, Hungary, 

 England, Pomerania, and Thuringia, 2 and especially amongst 

 those engaged in trades which bring them in contact with raw 

 pork and therefore with raw Cysticerci (as butchers, cooks, eating- 

 house keepers, &c ), or in people who obtain portions of ready 

 cooked or smoked sausages and hams from the butckei's' shops. 

 The most direct mode in which the transference may be effected 

 is, as experience has shown, the habit of eating raw pork 

 (Kleefeld's patient; Professor Merbach's observations ; Thuringia, 

 especially Nordhausen, Russia, Abyssinia). Hence also, perhaps, 

 arises the more frequent occurrence of Tania solium in temperate 

 zones, and especially in Central Europe. 



The importance of the subject may excuse the prolixity of the 

 following remarks : The reason why we find Tania solium so 

 plentifully in butchers and their families is, that the butchers 

 contaminate their own hands in sausage-making and also the 

 blades of their knives in cutting up and selling meat. When 

 they now wipe their mouths with the hands thus contaminated, 

 or place the knife bedaubed with Cysticerci in their mouths, or 

 lastly transfer these Cysticerci from the knife to the bread or 

 sausages Which they cut up for themselves, their families, or 

 servants, the insignificant and scarcely perceptible Cysticerci are 

 introduced into the mouth and swallowed. Cooks and even 

 housewives who cook and who have much to do with raw pork, 

 infect themselves, partly by means of their hands or utensils, aud 

 partly by tasting the mixed masses of meat prepared from raw 

 pork and other uncooked meats for the making of puddings before 



1 Reinlein, ' Bemerkungen iiber des Ursprungs des breiten Bandwurms,' Wien, 1812 ; 

 and Riippel, ' Reisen in Abyssinien.' 



2 We unfortunately bave no reports as to the occurrence of T. solium on tbe Sandwich 

 Islands and similar places, where the breeding of pigs has prospered since the time of 

 Cook. 



