218 



THE WORMS 



Bureau of Animal Industry, that the laziness and shiftlessness of the 

 " poor whites " of the South is partly due to a parasite called the 

 hookworm, reads like a fairy tale. 



The people, largely farmers, become infected with a larval stage 

 of the hookworm, which develops in moist earth. It enters the body 

 usually through the skin of the feet, for children and adults alike, 

 in certain localities where the disease is common, go barefoot to 

 a considerable extent. 



A complicated journey from the skin to the intestine now fol- 



A family of poor whites in North Carolina. All infected with hookworm 



disease. 



lows, the larvse passing through the veins to the heart, irom there 

 to the lungs ; here they bore into the air passages and eventually 

 reach the intestine by way of the windpipe. One result of the 

 injury of the lungs is that many thus infected are subject to tuber- 

 culosis. The adult worms, once in the food tube, fasten themselves 

 and feed upon the blood of their host by puncturing the intestine wall. 

 The loss of blood from this cause is not sufficient to account for 

 the bloodlessness of the person infected, but it has been discovered 

 that the hookworm pours out a poison into the wound which pre- 



