Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals / Including Some Account of the Ectozoa

by T. Spencer Cobbold

From Mooltan a specially interesting report was made by Dr Alexander Neill, who says:—

“I have carefully examined the mouth and tongue of a large number of living cattle, and of those slaughtered for issue as rations, and in no single instance did I find such cysts. These cattle were healthy.

“In a case that died, and in which cysts existed, I could discover nothing abnormal in or under the tongue.

“If such ‘cysts’ exist, or if such enlargements of the sublingual glands are found, I argue that they are not a diagnostic sign of what is termed ‘cyst infection,’ or more correctly ‘Cysticercus bovis,’ for in the recent outbreak of cattle disease in England, one most prominent symptom of that disease was a bunch of grape-like swelling under the tongue, which in advanced cases suppurated, and to a casual observer would have been called cysts or ‘bags of matter.’

“If such swellings are found in a bullock that is sick, it is merely symptomatic of an inflamed condition of the whole mucous surface of the intestinal canal, and not of any localised disease, such as Cysticercus, the above-mentioned swellings being merely inflamed sublingual glands.

“In the pig the diagnostic sign of swellings of the glands or ‘cyst’ under the tongue is not found in ‘Cysticercus,’ and the disease called ‘measles’ is not ‘Cysticercus,’ but a mere superficial inflammation of the skin and a symptom of fever. ‘Cysticercus cellulosus,’ as its name shows, infects the cellular tissue only of the pig, and cannot be discovered in life by any abnormal condition of skin.

“In ‘measles’ these swellings are found, because intestinal mucous membrane sympathises with eruption on the skin and are then merely inflamed glands, not cysts.”

Dr Neill concludes his report by remarking that the larvæ of the beef tapeworm can “only arrive at maturity in the mucous membrane of horned cattle,” and not in the cellular tissue. This is an error on Dr Neill’s part; but in adducing these instructive extracts from the Government Reports my chief object has been to show the prevalence of Cysticercus in the North-West Provinces of the Indian Peninsula. I may say that a large proportion of my tapeworm-infected patients have been officers from the Punjab, and one of these victims told me that when he superintended the serving out of rations to the troops, “he (and those who acted with him) sent the meat away to be burnt, even when they only detected a single cyst in any given carcase.” It is needless to remark that such a waste of valuable food is altogether reprehensible.

Some people, including not a few of the profession, make light of the occurrence of tapeworm, and I have seen many patients who had been told by their usual medical advisers that the presence of the worms was of little consequence. To account for this wide-spread error there is some basis in the fact that by far the majority of infested persons suffer only the trifling inconvenience arising from the passage per anum of the proglottides; moreover, the less civilised the tapeworm-bearers happen to be, the less are they likely to suffer. The recorded experience of Kaschin, before referred to, where 500 hospital patients, in the Baikal district, had tapeworm, although all of them were being treated for other disorders, affords another argument tending to the same conclusion. On the other hand, amongst Europeans only a small percentage of tapeworm-patients suffer severely. But without trenching upon the symptomatology and prognosis of tapeworm disease, I may remark that I have (in my Manual) summarised the whole facts of cysticercal prevalence within the compass of two brief propositions:—1. The prevalence or the rarity of Cysticerci in cattle in any given country must be determined primarily by the habits of the people; for since the beef measle can only result from the ingestion by the ox of the eggs of the Tænia mediocanellata, it is clear that the degree of infection of cattle will correspond with the facilities offered by egg-dispersion. 2. It may be affirmed that the frequency of this particular species of tapeworm amongst the people occupying any given area will bear a strict relation to the amount of underdone measly beef consumed by the inhabitants.

Another question, and one of great interest to sanitary science, is that which I have raised in reference to the period that nature requires for the destruction of the Cysticerci, or, in other words, for the performance of a natural cure by calcareous degeneration of the parasites. I have shown that all kinds of tapeworm larvæ (measles, bladder-worms, cœnuri, and so forth) have a natural life-epoch assigned to them, and in one of my experiments on a Dutch heifer or young cow I demonstrated that a period of ten months was more than sufficient to ensure the perfect destruction of the Cysticerci of cattle. Moreover, this law or process of natural cure is not limited to cestode parasites, but affects all other kinds of internal parasites in one or other of their juvenile stages of growth. In the flesh of my experimental animal I estimated that there were not less than 12,000 of these degenerated Cysticerci. This positive contribution to our knowledge of the limits assigned by nature to the epoch of larval activity is not merely one of abstract scientific interest, but it has important practical bearings, inasmuch as it points out in what way an entire herd of cattle (known to be measled by the post-mortem examination of one animal previously selected for the purpose, or for that matter, by the rather barbarous act of excising and examining a fragment of the muscle of a living one) may be freed of its parasitic guests; and it also shows how all risk of propagating tapeworm, apart from the question of subjecting the flesh to a certain temperature, may be effectually prevented. The stockowner has but to remove his animals for six or eight months to localities where no fresh infection can occur, when, at the expiration of the time mentioned, all those Cysticerci that existed in the beasts at the time of the transfer will have perished. The flesh of the animals may then be eaten with impunity, whether well cooked or raw. This is an important teaching deducible from experimental inquiry, and I am rather surprised that it has hitherto escaped the notice of persons who, though they affect to ignore the value of scientific researches, are particularly anxious to parade their practical knowledge, which, unhappily, too often proves a mere cloak for ignorance.