732 DISTRIBUTION AND MEDICINAL SIGNIFICANCE. 



Bothriocephalus, and that, as Schauinsland has reported, not one of the 

 fisher-folk in the Kurische Nehrung is exempt. In such cases it is 

 also not at all uncommon for several members of the same family to 

 be infected with the worm at the same time, or for several specimens 

 to live together in the same intestine, as is, for example, expressly- 

 stated by Huss to be the case among the coast population of Nord- 

 botten. We have already seen (p. 720) that the students to whom 

 Braun administered several larvae of Bothriocephalus produced almost 

 the same relative number of young worms ; and C. Vogt relates of him^ 

 self that, after having lived eighteen months in the neighbourhood of 

 Geneva, he once voided^ eight of these worms at one time. Mention 

 has already been made of Botticher's case (p. 715), in which over a 

 hundred young Bothriocephali were found. We may also consider it 

 due to the mode of life that children, on the whole, but rarely suffer 

 from Bothriocephalus, and that women, who are busied in the kitchen, 

 are more liable than mer. Of the eight tape-worm patients observed 

 by Bollinger in Munich, only three were males, and among his twenty 

 cases Krabbe only mentions one. In Varese, on the other hand, 

 Parona found among thirteen patients only five women. 



Our increased knowledge of the habits of intestinal worms has 

 dissipated an idea which has been several times expressed, namely, 

 that Bothriocephalus and Tcenia mutually exclude each other. Cases 

 of such a simultaneous parasitism are not wanting in recent literature, 

 although the necessary conditions do not perhaps frequently occur. 



It has, however, been proved by the above-mentioned feeding 

 experiments of Braun that man is not the only host of Bothriocephalus 

 latus. The occurrence of the worm in the dog has abeady been noted 

 by Linn^ and Pallas, and more recent investigations in very various 

 localities have confirmed these statements (von Siebold, Krabbe, Per- 

 roncito, and Braun). Whether the cat is infected spontaneously is 

 less certain. It is true that Creplin found some specimens of Bothrio- 

 cephalus in a domestic cat in Greifswald, but they were too young to 

 be certainly determined. ^ So, too, the Bothriocephali which Krabbe 

 observed in Copenhagen in a cat, and which he describes as 15 to 20 

 cm. in length, with large lancet-shaped head, and numerous calcareous 

 corpuscles in the joints, are certainly different from B. latus.^ Further, 

 the Bothriocephali of the dog are by no means all of the same kind ; 

 for in Iceland alone Krabbe noted no fewer than three different 

 species,* and probably the B. cordatus of Greenland ought to be re- 

 garded as a fourth. 



* " Die Herkunft der Eingeweidewiirmer des Meneohen," p. 16, 1878. 

 ^ " Observationes de Entozois ;" Gryphiswaldise, 1825, p. 67. 



= "Reoheroheshelmiutholqgiques en Denmark et en IslMide:" Copenhagen, 1860, p 19. 



* Ibid., p. 27. Digitized by Microsoft® "^ 



