27 
/ 
Even in regard to Strangles and Influenza readily diffusible as they are, there may 
arise conditions, in which from the limited area of their prevalence, or the favorable 
circumstances for imposing a barrier, we will be justified in repeating the experience of 
Vancouver’s Island, Prince Edward’s Island, La Paz, Key West, and all the West 
Indies except Cuba, and in extinguishing or excluding the poison to the incalculable 
benefit of the Country. 
But in conclusion I must briefly refer to a class of communicable diseases which 
have received too little attention at the hands of sanitarians. I allude to the parasitic 
affections. 
No one disputes the need of legislative action in reference to the different forms 
of acariasis (mange) in the domestic animals. I may therefore pass these over without 
further remark. Of ringworm something might be said, but considering its general 
amenability to treatment I will dismiss this subject also. 
But when we come to the entozoa we find a strange absence of even the advocacy 
of preventive measures. In some large cities it is true the pork is inspected for trichna 
and cysticercus (measles.) But why in the name of common sense should we continue to 
lop off the terminal twigs, of this upas, and not bethink ourselves to strike at the root? 
Nothing would be easier, in the majority of cases, than to trace the trichinous • pig to 
its pen, to slaughter and microscopically test all that have been kept in the same 
locality, to thoroughly destroy the germs even by the incineration of the wood work if 
necessary, and to secure and burn up all the rats and mice and if found infested all cats 
and dogs in the vicinity. Nor would it be more difficult to follow up the measly hog , 
to find with what human beings he had been reciprocating in an exchange of guests, to 
expel and destroy all the tapeworms from man, and to remove all hog-pens far from 
infested localities. 
What is to hinder our adopting similar measures, looking toward the extinction 
of the lung worms of horses, cattle, sheep, swine and poultry, of the deadly sclerostomata 
of the horse, of the tape worms of cattle and sheep, of the Strongylus fllicolis, S. Contor- 
tus, tricocephalus afflnis , ascaris ovis , and other destructive intestinal round worms of 
the sheep, of the Tcenia coenurus, T, echinococcus , T. marginata and other less hurtful 
tapeworms of the dog, of the cysticercus mediocanellata of the ox, of the stephamirus 
dentatus , the ascaris suis , the tricocephalus crenatus , the giant echinorynchus, and other 
entozoa of the hog, and the distomum lanceolatum and fasciola hepatica of the domestic 
animals generally when placed upon wet pastures. Each of these is capable of produc¬ 
ing an enzootic or even an epizootic, when the animals that reciprocate with each other 
in sustaining the parasite at its different stages abound in the same neighborhood, or 
when a sufficiency of suitable animal hosts and an environment of soil, vegetation 
and water favor their development and increase. * 
We all know how in wet seasons the liver rot has destroyed hundreds of millions of 
sheep in Europe, how it has repeatedly laid England under a contribution of 3,000,000 
head and upward in a single year, and how it has recently devastated the plains of 
Victoria, where the parasites were introduced in the bodies of German rams. We 
know how England is now almost infested throughout with the lung worms in cattle 
and sheep, and what ruinous loss of condition and life occur yearly to the young 
animals from this cause, and I may add that in several of our Western States devoted to 
the raising of sheep the condition of things is not much better. Last winter in a lecture 
before the N. Y. State Agricultural Society, I predicted that unless some protective 
measures were taken, our sheep runs would soon be in the same condition as those of 
