“Say rather for a number of such guests, since as a rule they are not found singly. They are commonly called solitary worms, an improper term, as you see, since there are generally several of them together. Their real name is tænia, or tape-worm, from their ribbon-like form.
“Imagine a narrow tape or band of a dull white color, a sort of ribbon of variable length that may measure as much as five meters; imagine this ribbon [[346]]almost as small as a hair near the creature’s head, then broadening little by little and attaining the width of a centimeter; picture to yourself the entire length of the creature divided into sections or joints, some square, others oblong, placed end to end like the beads of a chaplet, or, better, like pumpkin seeds strung one after another, and you will have a sufficiently good idea of the tænia or tape-worm.
“The number of these joints is sometimes as many as a thousand, and, what is more, new ones are always forming, for the tænia has the singular faculty of producing them indefinitely in a row, each one growing out of the preceding. All are full of eggs, detestable seed of the original malady in the pig, and then of the tape-worm in man. The terminal sections or joints, the oldest and ripest, become detached from time to time in chaplets and are expelled. Any pig nosing about in the excrement containing them is pretty sure to become infected from the eggs contained in these joints, for each one is the germ of a hydatid. These eggs will hatch in the animal’s intestines; and, as soon as hatched, the young worms, opening a passage for themselves here and there with their crown of hooks, will go and lodge wherever they please, some in the lean flesh, some in the fat, there to encase themselves in a resistant shell, a cell built out of the pig’s substance, and there they will await the moment favorable for their emigration to the human body.
“These frequent losses in chaplets of discarded sections do not in the least impair the tape-worm’s [[347]]vigor; new sections grow, and the frightful length of the creature is maintained. Were it to lose almost its entire length, that would in no wise trouble it; let only the head remain, firmly held in place by its hooks, and new joints will form until the worm is as long as ever. Until the head is got rid of there is no hope of deliverance. I could not describe to you, my children, the atrocious sufferings of a person afflicted with this formidable parasite so difficult to dislodge.”
“You give us goose-flesh,” said Emile, “with that five-meters-long worm that keeps growing again, each time stronger than before, provided its head is left.”
“It must need very serious precaution,” Louis remarked, “not to be attacked by the creature.”
“The precaution is very simple. Since the tape-worm has its origin in the diseased pig, let us beware of all pork thus infected. This infection, as I told you, is recognizable in the white granules abounding in the flesh, each granule being the abode of a little worm, the first form of the tænia. Raw meats, such as ham and sausage, are the only ones to fear, because salting and drying leave, if not all, at least some of these worms alive. But meat perfectly cooked, either boiled or baked, is absolutely without any danger even if infested with a multitude of these little granules, because heat of a sufficient intensity kills whatever worms they contain.
“The rule to follow, therefore, is plain: if a pig is diseased, it need not be summarily thrown away; [[348]]its flesh, although of inferior quality, its lard and bacon, can very well be utilized, but care must be taken never to use any of this food without first thoroughly cooking it at a heat intense enough to destroy every dangerous germ. As for the pig itself, it can be kept from the measles by cleanliness, and especially by seeing that it eats no excrement. Every pig that wanders about and feeds on filth deposited along walls may find under its snout some pieces of tænia, swallow them with the dirty food, and thus become infected with hydatids.
“To finish this subject, I will tell you of another tænia which in its tape-worm form inhabits the dog’s intestines, and in its bladder-like or hydatid stage has its home in the sheep’s brain. Grass defiled by the excrement of dogs affected with this tænia receives the eggs of the expelled ripened sections. A sheep comes to browse this grass, and in a few weeks a terrible disease shows itself in the poor animal. With wild eye, driveling mouth, and heavy head, the animal turns round and round, always the same way, and falls gasping on its side. Food no longer tempts it, the blade of grass stops on its bleeding lips. All its efforts to stand up are powerless; it keeps looking for a support, especially for its head, and if this support is lacking it falls after a few turns. This strange disease is called the staggers, from the animal’s tendency to turn and turn with staggering motions.
“Now if we open the brain of a sheep that has died of the staggers, we invariably find in the cerebral [[349]]substance one or more limpid bladders from the size of a pea to that of a hen’s egg.”