Salting for fifteen to twenty days destroys the vitality of the parasite.
Lesions. The lesions are confined to the presence of the cyst and of two little zones of chronic inflammation immediately surrounding it. Unless heavily infested the subjects fatten just as well as others.
The vesicles are semi-transparent, ³⁄₁₆ inch to ¼ inch in length, slightly ovoid in form, and contain a tænia head with four suckers, but without hooks.
In seven to eight months the cysts undergo degeneration, the liquid is absorbed, and calcium salts are deposited throughout the mass. The lesions which remain have, in the ox, the appearance of interstitial disseminated tuberculosis.
There is no curative treatment. The infested animal recovers spontaneously with the lapse of time, for the cysticerci undergo degenerative processes, but the flesh of such animals is of little commercial value.
From a preventive standpoint we can only hope to improve matters by a gradual and progressive change in social and public hygienic conditions.
Fig. 43.—Sexually mature segment of beef-measle tapeworm (Tænia saginata). c.p., Cirrus pouch with cirrhus; d.c., dorsal canal; g.p., genital pore; n., lateral longitudinal nerves; ov., ovary; sg., shell gland; t., testicles; ut., median uterine stem, enlarged (in part after Leuckart); v., vagina; v.c., ventral canal, connected by transverse canal; tc., vd., vas deferens; vg., vitellogene gland.
When the life of the nomad shall have been entirely replaced by that of the highly-civilised European and private hygienic precautions have rendered it impossible for animals to obtain access to segments or eggs of the Tænia saginata, beef measles will disappear.
At present, in the countries where the disease is common, one experiences a feeling of astonishment that it is not far more frequent; for experiment has shown that a person infected with one unarmed tapeworm expels with the fæces an average of four hundred proglottides per month, each proglottis or segment of the worm containing about 30,000 eggs, each of which is capable of developing into a tapeworm.