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Trichina and their Distribution . 
665 
VII. TRICHINAE AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION.* 
£ LESH-WORMS are now fully recognised as one of the 
most decided scourges of the human race, and a war 
of extermination has to be waged against them. It 
must not be supposed that these Trichina are a newly- 
created pest, or that their habits have even undergone any 
decided modification within historical ages. In the days 
when the microscope was not, the presence of these para- 
sites in pork and other flesh was little likely to be noticed, 
and when medical science was in its infancy the symptoms 
of trichinosis might very well be confounded with those of 
typhoid, of malarial fever, or of acute rheumatism. Dr. 
Leidy thinks that, even as recently as the American civil 
war, numbers of deaths in reality due to the use of semi- 
cooked pork were ascribed to fevers. 
Passing over, as beside our present purpose, the life- 
history of the parasite, its detection in meat, and the means 
recommended for its destruction if so present, we turn to 
the agencies for its distribution from one individual or one 
species to another. Trichina may be present, it appears, in 
swine, dogs, cats, rats, and incidentally in oxen, rabbits, and 
guinea-pigs. According to Mr. Phin birds and sheep do not 
offer an acceptable harbour to these intruders, since, even if 
fed upon trichinised matter, the parasites have not been 
detected in their flesh. We have heard, however, that cer- 
tain French soldiers became fatally trichinised from par- 
taking of the flesh of a goose. As the goose does not feed 
upon carrion, or offal of any kind, this case, if authentic, is 
the more serious. Trichinised river fishes are also said to 
have been detected near Antwerp. 
Mr. Phin enumerates four methods in which Trichina 
may be conveyed from one animal to another. The general 
process is that the trichinised animal is eaten, wholly or in 
part, by some carnivorous or omnivorous creature. In this 
manner man, swine, rats, cats, and dogs most frequently 
become infedted. Man is exposed to this danger only when 
he adopts the custom of eating pork, &c., raw, or “ rare,” 
which is the fashionable euphemism for half-raw. Among 
* Trichinae, How to Detedt them and How to Avoid them. By John Phin 
Rochester (U. S.) : Bausch and Lomb. Co. 
VOL. III. (THIRD SERIES) 2 X 
