352 ENTOZOA IN RELATION TO PUBLIC HEALTH, ETC. 
the principles of teetotalism. It has also to be noted that 
neither of these exclusive habits as regards diet and drink 
will ward off the possible contingency of invasion from the 
cysticercus of the pork tapeworm, which, by the way, when 
taking up 'its residence in the brain, gives rise to epilepti- 
form seizures. Fortunately, death is not common from this 
source. 
But it w ill be said by Mr. Holland and his supporters that 
these mere professional facts have nothing whatever to do 
with the question in which they are more immediately con- 
cerned. It is hopeless, perhaps, to attempt to induce them 
to think otherwise. In vain w 7 e assert that a single person 
affected with tapeworm discharges thousands of eggs daily, 
and that the majority of the germs thus distributed pass into 
the sewage of our towns. In vain w T e explain that the further 
dispersion of these germs over our fields and market gar- 
dens ensure t a more than ordinary facility of access into the 
bodies of cattle and other intermediary bearers. All such 
arguments, as well as others equally cogent, go for nothing. 
What these gentlemen desire in order to produce conviction 
I have already hinted at. To be still more precise, they say, 
in effect — “ When, in the neighbourhood of our towns, and 
on our sew r age farms, we see the sheep rotting from flukes 
and staggering from gid, and the oxen, cows, and other 
domesticated animals dying off by scores, as if attacked by 
a new plague, then your warnings shall receive considera- 
tion ; but in the absence of trichiniasis and other virulent 
forms of entozoal disorder, we shall continue to maintain 
that ‘the spreading of disease by the irrigation system is 
purely imaginary/ 3i 
This kind of reply, as I have already urged in the Intro- 
duction to my small work on e Human Tapeworms, 5 now 
out of print, is quite satisfactory to the persons making it, 
so long as they themselves remain free from internal para- 
sites ; but w'hen they are attacked the case is far otherwise. 
In the many instances of real suffering which have come 
under my professional care — and some of which, it may be 
said, could never have occurred but for the fact of germ dis- 
persion, taking place in one or other of the w r ays already ex- 
plained — I can testify that such assurances as the above 
afford very little comfort to those who are called upon to 
entertain these peculiar guests. If, indeed, it could be safely 
alleged that parasitic disorders have not increased in conse- 
quence of sewage distribution, I do not hesitate to say that 
such a state of things would not disprove the injuriousness 
of wholesale irrigation, but w 7 ould show 7 , rather, that the un- 
