T^NIA EOHINOCOCCUS. 



283 



are many of the Iceland doctors who, not unfrequently, have 

 upwards of 100 patients (aflaicted with the echinococcus disease) 

 under treatment at the same time, the total number of such cases 

 in the island being estimated at 10,000. By far the greater 

 number of these patients, however, are in the hands of quacks, 

 whose influence is the greater, because there are in all Iceland but 

 six legally authorized medical men, each of whom presides over a 

 district of about 1500 square (English) miles, embracing a popula- 

 tion of about 10,000 individuals. The treatment of the quacks is 

 exactly suited to keep up the epidemic, for, amongst their remedies, 

 dog's urine and fresh dog-excrement play a conspicuous part.* 



These statistics are sufficiently appalling ; but they are entirely 

 in accordance with the original statements of Schleisner, who, in a 

 record of 2600 cases of general disease, found 328 of them due to 

 hydatids; whilst, out of 327 patients which came under his own 

 immediate observation, 67 were suffering from the echinococcus 

 malady. He found the disease more common in the interior of the 

 country than near the coast ; an experience which coincides with 

 the well-known (and easily explained) circumstance that sailors 

 are singularly free from hydatids. Schleisner gives the following 

 table of the 385 cases above mentioned : — 



* " Die neuesten Entdeckungen uber mensohliche Enigeweidewiinner und deren 

 Bedeutung fiir die Gesundheitspflege." Convers. Jahrb. 1863, s. 654. 



