480 OCCUREENCE AND MEDICINAL SIGNIFICANCE. 



from a military hospital, its origin was extremely doubtful. Bremser 

 -was at first even inclined to doubt the existence of any hooks in 

 T. solium, for which the Vienna tape-worms were taken, uutil 

 Eudolphi sent him from Berlin the drawing of an armed human 

 tape-worm. ^ 



Still more insufficient are the data which have any bearing on the 

 frequency of Tcenia saginata in Germany and the neighbouring states, 

 since in them the two large-jointed species are almost always associ- 

 ated together. But it may at least be gathered from them that the 

 occurrence of the tape-worm varies in different districts, but that it 

 nowhere attains the frequency with which we have seen it to occur in 

 certain parts of Africa and Asia. 



According to the generalisations of the French army surgeons, the 

 tape-worm is twenty-three times as frequent among the soldiers in 

 Algiers as in France. On the ground of these statements, Davaine 

 reckons that in France hardly one tape-worm occurs among 8200 

 inhabitants, but adds that this number would be too small for Paris.^ 

 This proportion is also too small for England, as is shown, for instance, 

 by the fact that Bateman, a physician in extensive practice in London, 

 found among every 543 patients one infected with tape-worm. On 

 the basis of results obtained in the Dresden and Erlangen hospitals, 

 Mliller reckons, among .3814 post mortem examinations, twenty-four 

 cases of tape-worm (nineteen Tcenia solium, five T. saginata) ; that is 

 to say, 1168, or about 0'63 per cent., and these were so divided that 

 about O'lo per cent, were cases of T. saginata, and about 0'50 per cent, 

 of T. solium. It is, however, a moot-point whether this per-centage 

 ought to be regarded, without further investigation, as a standard for 

 the whole population. In Thuringia, according to da Conta, there is 

 one tape- worm patient in every 3315 inhabitants, and in the medical 

 districts of Eisenach, Apolda, Jena, and Weimar, where swine are 

 abundantly reared, and Tcenia solium is presumably the more frequent, 

 there is one in every 486. In the town of Hanover the tape-worm 

 patients have been reckoned even at 2 per cent.* 



The variations in the per-centages representing the occurrence of 

 tape-worms (and therefore also of Tmnia saginata) are of course deter- 

 mined by certain local circumstances which are dependent upon the 

 conditions of infection already discussed. These circumstances also 

 enable us to understand how certain classes and occupations suffer 



^ Loc. ctJ., p. 101. Kuchenmeister indeed holds another opinion, for according to him 

 Rudolphi found hooks in a worm sent to him by Bremser as bookless. In consequence 

 of this incorrect version, an unmerited slight is cast on Bremser's credibility. 



^ Loc. cit, t. ii., p. 83. 



' Comnare p. 151, note. 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



