PARASITES OF MAN.
Whatever notions people may entertain respecting the dignity of the human race, there is no gainsaying the fact that we share with the lower animals the rather humiliating privilege and prerogative of entertaining a great variety of parasites. These are for the most part entozoal in habit. As the parasites are apt to cause suffering to the bearer, a superstitious age sought to interpret their presence as having some connection with human wrong-doing. We can now afford to smile at such erroneous ideas. The intimate relation subsisting between parasitic forms dwelling in man and animals, and their interdependence upon one another, alone suffices to preclude the idea that parasites have been arbitrarily placed within the human bearer. It would seem, indeed, that our existence is essential to the welfare and propagation of certain species of parasites. Possibly it is only by accepting the hypothesis of “Natural Selection” that we can escape the somewhat undignified conclusion that the entozoa were expressly created to dwell in us, and also that we were in part designed and destined to entertain them. View the matter as we may, the internal parasites of man and animals strictly conform to a few well-known types of structure, but these types branch out into infinitely varied specific forms. The vulgar mind sees nothing attractive in the morphology and organisation of a parasitic worm, and common-place conceptions of the beautiful cannot be expected to embrace within their narrow grasp the marvelous harmony and order that pervade the structure and economy of the individual members of this remarkable class of beings.