478 OCCUREENCE AND MEDICINAL SIGNIFICANCE. 



have a custom of eating half-done beef ; and in the English regiments 

 stationed there, Tcenia saginata is of frequent occurrence, inasmuch 

 as some of the soldiers adopt the same practice. In one case the 

 disease broke out three months after the march, and indeed not in a 

 few, but in from fifteen to twenty cases. After two years' residence, 

 about a third part of the soldiers were infected with the tape-worm. 

 Only the officers, whose food consists principally of mutton, which is 

 also prepared in a cleanlier and more careful way, are, as a rule, 

 exempt. The Hindus are still more free from it, since they live 

 entirely upon vegetables. 



In respect of frequency of occurrence, Arabia and Syria are little 

 behind India. This is shown, for example, by the fact already men- 

 tioned, that a French naval ship stationed off the Syrian coast, whose 

 crew had procured their supply of beef from the shore, and had 

 devoured much of it in the form of beef-steaks a la Tartare, had, 

 after a short time, a considerable number of cases of tape-worm 

 (19 out of 152 men).^ We also learn from Kaschin that among the 

 Buratis inhabiting Baikal every individual is infected with a tape- 

 worm.^ It is true that these observations were not made on the 

 spot, but in Irkutsk, where the individuals in question were all men 

 who had been garrisoned for years as Cossacks. But in spite of the 

 great distance from their home, they were nearly all infected with 

 tape-worm, =* and sometimes with several (up to fifteen), which 

 Kaschin took for Taenia, solium, but which undoubtedly belonged to 

 T. saginata. This is seen not only by the description which Kaschin 

 gives of the worm (20 feet long), but from what he tells us of the 

 habits of their hosts. We learn, for instance, that the Buratis live 

 almost entirely upon flesh, especially on that of oxen, sheep, camels, 

 horses, and more rarely of pigs, and that they are so voracious that 

 two men are able to devour at one sitting a sheep two years old. 

 Moreover, this flesh is neither perfectly cleaned nor even cooked, and 

 is eaten from a table which has been used immediately before in 

 cutting up the slaughtered animal, and which has as little acquain- 

 tance with water as the vessels and their owners. Fat, liver, and 

 kidneys are eaten raw, and sick animals are as little despised as 

 half-rotten carcases. 



Schmidtmiiller observed Tcenia saginata (Bothriocephahos tropicus) 

 in Java, principally, it is true, but not exclusively, in the black 

 soldiers imported thither from the coasts of Guinea ; and Professor 



1 Mim. Acad. mid. Paris, p. 998, 1877. 



'' St. Petersburg Medical Gazette, vol. i., p. 366, 1861 (Russian). 

 ' In 113 post mortem examinations the worms were only twice absent, and their 

 presence was also proved iiy^QD-ijthfP/MT5ons-aOiD jy^^reated in the hospital. 



