THE OCCURRENCE OE A PROLIEERATING CESTODE 
LARVA (SPARGANUM PROLIFERUM) IN MAN IN 
FLORIDA." 
By Ch. Wardell Stiles, Ph. D., 
Chief of Division of Zoology, Hygienic Laboratory, U. 8. Public Health and 
Marine-Hospital Service. 
(Figs. 1 to 18.) 
Medical history of the case. — In June of this year (1907), I re- 
ceived from Dr. H. Gates, of Manatee, Fla., specimens of tvorms, for 
identification, which he had taken from the skin of a man. The follow- 
ing extracts from Doctor Gates’s letters give all that is known to me 
regarding the medical history of the case. In connection with this 
history, it will be well to abstract in considerable detail an account 
of a very similar case recently reported by Ijima (1905) in Tokyo, 
J apan. 
Oates's case . — Inclosed find specimens of worms from human fiesh. They are 
inclosed in sacks deep under the skin in the connective tissue. My patient has 
thousands of them all over the trunk ; they can be seen and felt as nodules ; 
deeper in the connective tissue in the left groin and left breast there seem to be 
large masses of them. I send some I obtained by cutting open the nodules and 
squeezing them out, and others still in the cyst as I found them. — From letter 
dated June 17, 1907. 
In reply to your request for history, etc., of patient (J. W. M.) infected with 
larval tapeworm, I would state that I first discovered the condition in April of 
this year. I was called in to treat him for dysentery. While examining over 
abdomen I found a great many nodules in the skin and also in the fascia 
between the skin and tlie muscles. Deep down in the abdominal cavity I found 
large and small tumors, some movable and others fixed by adhesions. All the 
lymphatic glands on the side most infected were enlarged and in masses, as if 
they had formed close union with surrounding tissue. 
The muscles were exempt from nodules, but soft and fiabby. I opened one 
nodule near the surface and obtained two worms. Most of the nodules on the 
® This article forms part of a paper which, by permission of the Surgeon- 
General, was preseiiLed upon invitation before the Sixth International Der- 
matological Congress, in New York, September 9-15* 1907. 
(D 
