Worms : a series of lectures on practical helminthology delivered at the Medical College of the Middlesex Hospital with cases illustrating the symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of internal parasitic diseases

Preface

In these Lectures I have not attempted to cover the whole ground of Practical Helminthology ; nevertheless,, with the exception of hydatids, I have more or less fully considered all those forms of internal parasitism which ordinarily come under the notice of the physician.

The first six of these discourses have appeared in the pages of the Medical Times and Gazette; the remainder are entirely new, and have been only very recently delivered.

To any rightly constituted mind the process of self-assertion is always a painful operation ; yet there are circumstances which not merely justify, but actually necessitate such a step in the interests of truth.

As I have remarked at the close of the chapter on Trichina spiralis, in the supplement to my larger treatise, there are authors on this side the Channel who systematically ignore the labours of theii' own countrymen.'' Acting for myself, therefore, I can only meet such puerile negations of home-work by pointing to the several papers I have contrivi

PREFACE.

buted to this department of Medical Science and Biology. The titles of these fragments and more sustained efforts I have thrown together in an Appendix, and in this shape they will at least ha\^e the advantage of expressing the sum of my felt indebtedness to editors and to other learned and liberal-minded persons who^ throughout a period of nearly twenty years, have generously and persistently encouraged me in these researches.

As it is now too late for me to allude to the subject elsewhere in these pages, I wish particularly to call attention to the very recently issued " Seventh Annual Report of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India/''

From Dr. Cunningham^s Report it appears that Dr. Oliver, of the Royal Artillery, at JulluDder, has succeeded in experimentally rearing the Taenia mediocanellata in a low class Mahommedan syce and in a Hindoo boy, by the ingestion on their part of beef- measles j thus affording most interesting confirmation of the truth of certain practical conclusions which I have enforced on other grounds in my Cantor Lectures and in the earlier pages of the present treatise.

T. S. C.

84, WiMPOLE Street, Cavendish Square, Jan. 5th, 1872.