TMmA SOLIUM. 211 



Ge7ieral and Specific Characters. — A large species of cestode helminth, in its sexually- 

 mature or strobila condition, varying from ten to twenty, or even, it is said, to thirty 

 feet and upwards in length; breadth at the widest part very nearly one-third of an inch ; 

 head about the size of a pin-cap, globular, but produced in front so as to form a short, 

 conical proboscis or rostellum, the latter being armed with a double crown of hooks, from 

 twenty-two to twenty-eight in each circular row; head furnished with four sucking 

 disks, and succeeded by a very narrow neck nearly half an inch in length ; the latter 

 being continued into the anterior, front, or sexually immature part of the body, in which 

 traces of segmentation at first appear in the form of fine transverse lines, which gradu- 

 ally becoming more and more widely separated, leave brief interspaces ; these parts 

 merging eventually into distinct segments or joints ; the earUest formed immature joints 

 are extremely narrow, the proglottis or sexually -mature joint commencing at about the 

 four hundi-ed and fiftieth segment (Leuckart) ; the total number of joints in a worm ten 

 feet long being upwards of eight hundred (Klichenmeister) ; mature proglottides twice 

 as long as they are broad, comparatively thin and transparent, furnished with a branched 

 uterus, consisting of a central longitudinal stem, giving ofi" from seven to ten branches 

 on either side ; joints in the form of hermaphroditic zooids, having a common reproduc- 

 tive papilla, placed at the border on one side below the central hne, but not uniformly 

 either to the right or left in series ; male orifice in front or above the vaginal outlet ; 

 penis sickle-shaped ; eggs rounded ; larval or hydatid condition equivalent to the well- 

 known measle or Cysticercus (teke) celluloses of authors. 



Name and History. — Not a few persons still suppose that the 

 common tapeworm occurs solitarily in the human body, being 

 naturally led into this error by the Linnean title, which certainly 

 was originally intended to convey a notion which we now know to 

 be erroneous. Frequently, indeed, it occurs singly, but Klichen- 

 meister has several times found two or three together ; his col- 

 league. Dr. Pfaff, saw seven ; Madame Heller thirty ; and Klichen- 

 meister adds, " Dr. Kleefeld of Gorlitz once counted forty expelled 

 from one patient." In many cases, where it has been said that one 

 enormous long worm existed, it is more than probable that there 

 were several associated. Thus, in Dr. Coffin's American edition 

 ofBrera's "Treatise on Verminous Diseases," which has also been 

 quoted by Weinland, " Yan Doeveren relates the history of a pea- 

 sant who, after taking an emetic, evacuated sixty metres (upwards 

 of siKty-five yards) of Taenia, and who probably would have voided 

 more if he had not broken the worm from an apprehension that he 

 was discharging all his intestines." One can scarcely believe this 

 was a single specimen of Tcenia soliwn. 



The tapeworm in its strobile condition has been known from 



