534 OCCUERENCE AND EESULTS OF TAENIA SOLIUM. 



higher temperature and a longer exposure to it are necessary. The 

 flesh must be boiled or roasted till it is " done through and through." 

 No bladder-worm can survive the coagulation of the surrounding 

 albumen, or the decolorisation of the blood, but half -cooked flesh 

 contains numerous living bladder-worms. 



The process of smoking and pickling, if rightly conducted, may 

 also render the bladder-worm harmless. Weinland, indeed, speaks of 

 a rumour current in Boston that the English soldiers during the 

 Crimean war rejected the cured ham sent them from home, since it 

 infected them with tape- worm ; but this is contradicted by the fact 

 that the bladder- worms can hardly survive the death of their host 

 more than a few weeks. ^ 



As to ham properly prepared from measly flesh, my experiments, 

 which were detailed in the first edition of this work, and which 

 were the first on the subject, have proved its harmlessness. As I 

 then pointed^ out, the fluid in the bladder gradually disappears by 

 evaporation during the smoking. The body collapses, and, after a 

 short time, acquires, like the head, a turbid character. Even in fresh 

 ham, bladder-worms so altered never exhibited any symptom of hfe, 

 even when I transferred them into the stomach of a newly killed 

 animal, and surrounded them with the moist warmth of the incubating 

 apparatus. This was equally unsuccessful in the case of older ham, 

 in which the bladder- worms had shrivelled up into knots of the size 

 of a large pin-head. 



Kiichenmeister arrived at similar results in the experiments which 

 he has lately conducted along with Siedamgrotzky in the Dresden 

 Veterinary College, but their cogency is weakened, inasmuch as the 

 measly flesh (cured and smoked) was given to a dog, an animal not 

 specially adapted to prove the vitality and developmental potency of 

 bladder-worms from the pig. 



Not only culinary treatment, but also decomposition of the flesh, 

 soon puts an end to the life of the bladder-worm. In midsummer I 

 have seen the bladders becoming flabby and turbid in eight days, 

 while in autumn and winter they were alive and in motion (in moist 

 warmth) after I had kept the measly flesh fourteen days in a space 

 secured from frost, at a temperature of from 5° to 8° C. 



Although the danger of infection by food prepared from pork is 

 thus on the whole but slight, yet it cannot be denied that the popular 

 methods do not always ensure the death of the inmates. Tliis is 

 especially the case with those dishes, such as cutlets and sausages, 

 which are rapidly prepared. Such dishes serve to explain the presence 

 of tape-worms in persons who have certainly never eaten raw meat. 



1. "Tape-Worms .of Man," d. 36. 



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