Rarity of Teenia Soluimrin Rforth America.—Stiles. 
281 
NOTES ON PARASITES. 
By Ch. Wardell Stiles. 
32 : On the rarity of Tcenia solium in North America. 
[Appears simultaneously in The Veterinary Magazine, and in the Bui. Soc. Zool. de 
France, 1895]. 
[Reprinted from The Veterinary Magazine, May, 1895, Vol. II., No. 5.] 
A statement concerning the presence of Tcenia solium and its 
larval stage Cysticercus celluloses in America, which I have 
noticed in several zoological and medical works, and which 
Railliet has recently repeated in his excellent Traite de Zool- 
ogie medicale et agricole, 1893, p. 247, leads me to make a 
correction concerning the question at issue. 
Railliet states: “ Le Tenia arme est relativement rare en 
Asie, en Afrique et dans l’Amerique du Sud ; il est au con- 
traire assez repandu dans l’Amerique du Nord, ou l’elevage 
des Pores a pris une enorme extension ” . . . “ L,e para- 
site (C. celluloses) est aussi extremement repandu en Ireland, 
en Esclavonie et aux Etats-Unis.” 
Railliet and others have evidentlv based their statements 
upon the statistics by Osier and Clement from Montreal, upon 
Verrill’s report of 1870, and upon several articles in American 
medical journals. 
McMurrich, in his Invertebrate Morphology, (p. 159,) makes 
the statement that T. solium is the most common tapeworm of 
man, probably on the same authorities. 
In regard to the statistics cited I would remark the following : 
Osier and Clement state that they found the parasite in Mon- 
treal in 76 hogs out of 1037 examined, but that “only the 
livers were inspected, as is was impossible to examine the meat 
thoroughly.” In spite of the high authority of Osier’s and 
Clement’s names, these statistics must be rejected in toto, as it 
is more than probable that the majority of these cases (if not 
all of them) were Cysticercus tenuicollis of Tesnia marginata 
instead of C. celluloses; this statement is borne out by their 
description of the worm on p. 10 of their report. 282 
The Veterinary Magazine. 
Verrill, it will be noticed, does not state directly that he has 
ever seen a case of T. solium, but simply that “ our recent war 
was the means of greatly increasing the numbers of this and 
other parasites, both internal and external.” I cannot admit 
this statement as having any value in the statistics of T. solium, 
for ou*r soldiers received rations of both pork and beef, and 
in time of war it is not likely that a surgeon will take the 
trouble to make specific determinations. Furthermore, it does 
not appear from the statistics of the Medical Department of 
the United States Army that tapeworms were especially com- 
mon during the war, and so far as statistics go no distinction 
is made in the various species of tapeworms. The following 
table gives a summary of the parasitic diseases recorded for the 
Union troops during the war : Rarity of Tcenia Solium in North America.—Stiles 
283 
May 
and 
June, 1861. 
July, 1861, 
to June 30, 
1862. 
July 1, 1862, 
to June 30, 
1863. 
July 1, 1863, 
to June 30, 
1864. 
July 1, 1864, 
to June 30, 
1865. 
July 1, 1865, 
to June 30, 
1866. 
Tot 
43*, 
37,< 
\L. 
Mean strength in field and garrison ....... 
In general hospitals 
41,556 
279.37* 
9.548 
614,325 
45,630 
619,703 
55,7*o 
574,022 
71,484 
99,080 
2,817 
237 
3.38 
Total number of patients treated • • 
Total number of deaths 
27.717 
118 
878,163 
I9»I59 
1,757,645 
51,870 
1,510,000 
42,969 
1,406,001 
47,772 
245,954 
4,735 
Cases. 
5,825,480 
Deaths. 
166,623 
Parasitic Diseases : 
Other intestinal worms 
Other diseases of this order 
* 
* 
24 
* 
* 
* 
* 
1,057 
* 
* 
6,263 
I42 
* 
t9*3 
84 
11,826 
*42 
* 
**444 
60 
*2,015 
f22I 
* 
**332 
44 
1,976 
43 
* 
4* 
42 
52,080 
548 
I,o8l 
1,730 
230 
1 
7 
* Not given, or included in general statements, 
f i death. 
** 3 deaths. 
WHITE TROOPS. 284 
The Veterinary Magazine, 
NEGRO TROOPS. 
July i. 
1863 
to 
June 30, 
1864. 
July 1, 
1864 
to 
June 30, 
1865. 
July 1, 
1865 
to 
June 30, 
1866. 
Total. 
Mean strength in field and garrison 
43,952 
83,571 
55,039 
60,854 
In general hospital 
1,222 
5,572 
1,578 
2,791 
— 
Total number of patients 
Cases. 
629,354 
Deaths. 
Total number of deaths 
— 
— 
— 
— 
29,004 
Parasitic Diseases : 
Itch 
387 
1,456 
1,313 
3>*56 
Tapeworms 
8 
8 
2 
18 
— 
Other intestinal worms 
+376 
182 
|66 
624 
6 
Other diseases of this order 
2 
9 
1 
12 
— 
Thus in a total of 5,548,854 patients from July 1, 1862, to 
June 30, 1866, only 566 were diagnosed as having tapeworms, 
or 1 in 9,803. One of these died, and 8 were discharged from 
the service on physicians’ certificates of disability. These 
statistics (taken from the Medical and Surgical History of the 
Rebellion, Part I, Vol. 1, pp. 641, 742,) hardly bear out Ver- 
rill’s statement. 
As for the statistics of tapeworms given in a number of 
articles by American physicians, I should ignore the spe- 
cific determination of Tcenia solium in the vast majority of 
cases, on the simple grounds that so little attention is paid to 
the subject of parasitology in most American medical colleges, 
that I am not willing to accept the specific determination Tcenia 
solium made by the average practitioner, unless verified by a 
zoologist. This may seem rather an extreme statement to 
make, but it is based upon experience, for I have examined a 
number of worms labeled Tcenia solium by American and Ger- 
man physicians in this country, and every one has proven to 
be typical T. saginata. 
Of all the 300 or more specimens of human tapeworms from 
patients in various parts of this country, which have passed 
through my hands during the last three years, 3 specimens 
have been Bothriocephalus latus, and all the rest have been 
{ 5 deaths, f t death. Rarity of Tcenia Solium in North America—Stiles. 
285 
Tcenia saginata. Personally I have yet to see a strobila of T. 
solium of American origin, although I have seen the Cysticercus 
celluloses several times; the only adult T. solium contained in 
the government and private collections under my charge, is one 
imported in alcohol from Leipzig. 
H. C. Hand (1873) in the Report of the Minnesota State 
Board of Health, collects a number of statistics of tapeworms 
in Minnesota, but by far the greater part of the determinations 
are made by practitioners who speak of “ T. solium" and “ T. 
lata" (Bothriocephalus latus). Now it is perfectly evident that 
when a man is not able to distinguish between Tes?iia and Both- 
riocephalus, his determination of T. solium is not to be taken. 
Some of the cases reported in Hand’s paper are probably T. 
solium, as cases of pork-measles are also recorded, but the 
determinations as given are evidently too superficial to be 
accepted in statistics. One physician records 33 cases of T. 
solium and 2 of "lata" but none of T. saginata. That these 
numbers can not be accepted, and that the physician was not 
acquainted with the characters of T. solium is shown by a 
statement following, to the effect that in one family he found 
two children and a dog infected with T. solium. The strobila 
of T. solium, as a matter of fact, does not occur in the dog. 
Hand himself points out in his article that many of these de- 
terminations are probably incorrect, and that the specimens 
mentioned as T. lata are probably T. saginata. 
I naturally do not wish to deny that T. solium exists in this 
country, for we have plenty of evidence of its presence in some 
parts of the country, more particularly in the South, and 
among the foreigners. Leidy mentions it in Philadelphia ; 
Herff has recently recorded it for Texas ; Curtice has seen two 
cases, *and a number of other reliable parties have found it in 
other States. Salmon has seen C. celluloses in North Carolina 
and Texas; Leidy in Pennsylvania, Osier in Baltimore, Les- 
sing and others in Minnesota ; several cases have been found 
by Bureau of Animal Industry inspectors in the various abat- 
toirs ; Curtice has seen 3 cases (North Carolina and New Mex- 
ico). I have one case from Massachusetts, another from 
Chicago, still another from Montana. On the whole, how'ever, 
this species of cestode must be looked upon as rare in this 
country, in comparison with T. saginata, and there is no 
ground, so far as I can find, for believing that C. celluloses 286 
The Veterinary Magazine. 
and the adult form T. solium are any more common in North 
America than they are in Europe ; in fact, so far as I can see, 
from published statistics, from examination of specimens, and 
from my own personal experience in Germany and America, 
T. solium is more common in Germany than it is in this 
country. 
Our comparative freedom from the worm is probably to be 
explained by the superiority of our methods in curing pork 
and by the fact that the unhygienic custom of eating raw pork 
exists in this country only among the foreigners, chiefly among 
Germans. 
r. 2, 1894. 
B. A. J., U. S. Department Agriculture.