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American Treasures of the Library Congress |
In the times between 1634 and 1645, Scultetten and Rentter were the first
to refer to the bladder-worm (larval) stage of Taenia Multiceps,
with Wepfer,
a Swiss
physician adding in 1620-85,1675 that 'gid' or vertigo, the unstable gait
or giddiness that is characteristic of infected sheep and cattle, was
caused by a bladder (coenuri/larva) in their brain. He
also described the epidemic of
coenurosis that occured in 1658.
Friedrich
Kuchenmeister a popular
German physician well known for developing scientific meat inspection by
veterinarians, performed an experiment in 1853 with Taenia
Multiceps proving beyond a reasonable
doubt that the cystic worms were necessary steps in the development of
taenia. The experiment went as follows: After collecting coenuri (the
plural of coenurus, the larval stage of Taenia Multiceps) from
sheep, an intermediate host for the tapeworm, Kuchenmeister administered
them to a dog, the
reservoir, in order to obtain mature proglottids (one of the segments of a
tapeworm, containing both male and female reproductive organs of the
worm). These proglottids were in turn administered to healthy sheep,
and sixteen days later these sheep became infected with the disease. This
experiment helped to prove the importance of cystic worms in the
development of taenia.
The first recorded human infection with Taenia
was in a Paris Locksmith who presented with convulsions and aphasia in
1913. During his autopsy, two coenuri were found in his brain, with one
of them containing 75 scolices or suckers, which the parasite
uses to attach itself to its host.