TAPE-WOEMS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS. 409 



the tape-worm. Even in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ, 

 Aetius and Paulus ^gineta explained the tape-worm as a meta- 

 morphic product of the intestinal mucous membrane,^ and in later 

 authors one frequently meets with similar views. But there are not 

 wanting,positive proofs of our statements. First I would note that 

 Taenia saginata is much more frequent in the countries round the 

 Mediterranean, and especially in the East, than T. solium, which belongs 

 more to the north of Europe. So, too, the statement of Hippocrates, 

 that the tape-worm patient very often evacuates "quali quid cucumeris 

 semen " {olov aiKvov aTrep/jbo) — that is to say, that he voids in portions 

 the ripe joints of the worm, or proglottides — describes a phenomenon 

 which is much more frequent and much more striking in the case 

 of Tcenia saginata than of Taenia solium. 



I win not, however, assert that it was exclusively Tcenia saginata 

 that was known to the Greek physicians. I can the less do this, since 

 T. solium is by no means absent from the East, as is decidedly proved 

 by the fact that the bladder- worm of the pig, from which it is de- 

 scended, has been known there from antiquity. The only question is, 

 what particular form it was with which the physicians of antiquity 

 and of later times were most familiar, and to which their statements 

 mostly refer ? And that form is, as we have said, decidedly T. saginata. 

 When T. solium occasionally occurred, there would seem to the older 

 physicians all the less reason to mention it specially, and to distin- 

 guish it from the larger and more frequent, or at least more striking 

 forms, since it is by no means very markedly different from T. saginata. 



The Arabian physicians and their immediate successors must also 

 have made their investigations mainly on Tcenia saginata. This may 

 be inferred not only from the geographical distribution of the two 

 worms, but because, like Hippocrates, they regarded the exit of the 

 so-caUed Vermes cucurbitini (Chabb-al-Kar'i) as proof of the presence 

 of the tape-worm, and were even many of them of the opinion that the 

 latter only originated subsequently from the former by the forma- 

 tion of a chain. 



At any rate, the exit of the tape-worms, which seemed to the 

 ancients so characteristic, excluded the supposition that their Lumbricus 

 latus is the same as the present Bothriocephalus latus, which, instead 

 of separate joints, usually gives them off only in numbers. And 

 since the latter is almost absent from the countries in the Mediter- 

 ranean basin, and if found in the south and south-east of Europe, is 

 usually confined to Switzerland, and the districts in its immediate 



^ "Lumbricus latus transmutatio, ut ita dicam, est membranae intestinis intrinsecus 

 agnatSB in corpus quoddam animatura." — Aetius, "Medicina tetrabiblos " iii., serm. i., 



c.p. xi., de lumbrico lato. Digitized by Microsoft® 



