Jan. 20, 1923 
Carbon Tetrachlorid as an Anthelmintic 
187 
more efficient than chenopodium and has not the depressing effects of that drug; (d) it 
is much cheaper than any drug that has been used; (e) it can be prepared in a high 
degree of purity, and a chemically pure preparation should always be used; (f) the 
person who is being treated can do his usual day’s work. Children when 1 year of 
age may be given 10 minims of carbon tetrachloride with safety, and this dose should 
be increased by 2 minims for each year of apparent age. Thus a child of 10 would 
receive 28 minims, a youth of 16, 40 minims (2.5 cc.), and an adult dose should be 
from 50 to 80 minims (3 to 5 cc.), according to the size of the patient. 
These authors report a second case of a prisoner treated with carbon 
tetrachlorid and then executed. This man was given 6 cc. on one occa¬ 
sion and a similar dose 13 days later. A week later the man was exe¬ 
cuted and found to have no ascarids or hookworms on post-mortem 
examination; they state that 4 ascarids were passed after the first treat¬ 
ment. The organs showed no degeneration on microscopic examina¬ 
tion. Hampton (22) refers to these same prisoners and notes that in the 
second case 1 whipworm and 8 pinworms were found post mortem. 
With reference to the 20 students referred to by Nicholis and Hampton 
( 28 ), he states that 13 reported a slight headache and giddiness, 4 claimed 
that they felt burning or rather tingling sensations in the body, and 4 
had no symptoms whatever. Hampton states; 
All admitted that the symptoms they felt were too slight to mention. Two of those 
treated had previously taken chenopodium and 1 had taken thymol; all 3 stated that 
they preferred to take carbon tetrachloride. The head master stated that in his 
opinion the students were not inconvenienced at all by taking the treatment. He 
had seen 2 previous classes take chenopodium and found that they suffered consid¬ 
erable inconvenience at the time. 
As regards cost, he says that chenopodium costs 30 shillings a pound and 
is given in a dose of 1.5 cc., followed by magnesium sulphate; caj*bon 
tetrachlorid costs 3 shillings a pound and is given in a dose of 3 cc. with¬ 
out a purgative. As regards efficacy, he states that “One 1.5 cc. dose 
of oil of chenopodium gives microscopical cures in from 30 to 50 per 
cent of the patients treated, while one 3 cc. dose of carbon tetrachloride 
gives microscopical cures in 90 per cent of the cases treated.** 
McVail (27), according to a review, has given children, aged 12, 1 dram 
(3.75 cc.) of carbon tetrachlorid on 2 successive days without ill effects. 
A dose of 1 dram to a very old man was followed by irregularity of the 
pulse and slurring speech. The largest dose he gave an adult was 70 
minims (about 4.35 cc.) on 2 successive days. He reports that the drug 
is a soporific, and that at a leper asylum 51 patients were given a dose of 
1 fluid dram each one evening, and states— 
and all slept so soundly that a burglar was able to remove the contents of the rice 
godown during the night. . . . It does not appear to aggravate albuminaria and 
may be given with confidence in cases of kala-azar complicated with ancylostomiasis 
during die remissions of temperature, though kala-azar cases stand chenopodium 
badly. Carbon tetrachlorid is of little value against Ascaris, Trichuris, and Hymen- 
olepis nana . On the other hand, this drug appears to be almost specific for thread¬ 
worms [pinw r orms]. In 13 cases Oxyuris worms were found in the stools after a single 
treatment with carbon tetrachlorid, and in 4 cases after double treatment, though 
Oxyuris ova had been found during the previous microscopic examination only in 3 
cases out of the 17. [It is exceptional to find eggs in the feces in human infestations 
with pinworms, as the gravid female migrates to the rectum and passes out with the 
eggs stored in the uterus.] 
The above report in regard to the efficacy of carbon tetrachlorid in 
removing pinworms from man should be correlated with the findings of 
Nicholis and Hampton ( 28 ), who report the passage of 4,945 pinworms 
by a group of 64 students, an average of 77 worms each, assuming that 
all were infested, and with the findings of Leach (26), who reports the 
