Word: tapeworms
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...word, but a guttural hissing--and he saw that she had not teeth. The glistening lips came to meet his and attached themselves to him wih a suction stronger than death, and her shawl dropped, revealing no arms, but a long, coiled, viscous body, the tubular shape of a tapeworm, eagerly welcoming him into its embrace...
From Patting Dogs. When humans eat infected meat that is not thoroughly cooked, the cysts are digested, releasing a tapeworm head that attaches itself to the wall of the intestine. The "beef tapeworm of man" (Taenia saginata) may grow to be 40 ft. long and half an inch wide. This is the species whose heads are occasionally sold as active ingredients of "reducing pills." They may be slightly effective by causing general debility (it is not true that tapeworms increase appetite), but a society of tapeworms coiled in the abdomen cannot improve the figure...
More dangerous to man than the beef tapeworm is Echinococcus gramdosus. Sometimes the microscopic eggs adhere to the fur of dogs and find their way into the mouths of dog patters. Once established in human tissue, a single egg can multiply asexually into millions of tapeworm heads enclosed in a cyst as big as a grapefruit...
From Uncooked Fish. Another tapeworm partial to humans, Diphyllobothrium latum, is acquired by eating uncooked fish. It is common in Scandinavia, where raw fish livers are considered a delicacy. In some parts of Finland, 80% of the people are infected...
...Heyneman studies all the variations of tapeworm life, but most of his professional time goes to Hymenolepsis nana, the dwarf mouse tapeworm that infects between 1% and 2% of the population of U.S. Southern states. Its intermediate host is the flour beetle, which may be ground with grain and eaten by humans. It can also be carried to man by mouse droppings that get into the food. A person infected by H. nana soon develops immunity, ejects the established worms and does not acquire new ones for several years at least. Dr. Heyneman hopes to discover the mechanism of this...