Mites like ticks can carry infection, though in its absence they usually depreciate health, condition and value by irritation. The harvest mite of a dull red color, and an European one of a brilliant crimson, produce great irrita tion for several days, or continuously if the victim goes daily through vegetation. Pro tection is sought by indoor life, by solutions of tobacco or hellebore or by sulphur.
Scabies in man, Mange in cattle are due to any one of various Acari, the burrowing ones (Sarcoptes from Sarx flesh) boring into the skin or sweat-glands, and the others living on the surface, under scurf, scales or scabs. (Psoroptes Psora itch and Symbiotes live to gether). The mange acari are very prolific, reaching 7,500,000 from a single pair in six generations, 60 days. They can be treated by sulphur or hellebore ointments, naphthalin, potassium sulphide or by simple oil inunction — the oil being applied to the right and left sides of the body on alternate days. Tape worms. These are flat worms consisting of a succession of segments the first of which bears the small head with four suckers on the cor ners, and a proboscis in some species bearing hooks for attachment to the mucous mem brane. Each segment is bisexual, and when mature is a mere bag of eggs. The embryos hatched out, each bores its way into the tissues of its new host, forming the bladder worm or scolex, and the next host devours the scolex which then grows into the mature tapeworm. If it fails to enter a suitable host it perishes. But the two hosts usually live in numbers close together, and as each feeds on the products of the other, it follows that the worms multiply so as to cause most deadly plagues in flocks and herds. Cattle harbor in the bowel the following tapeworms: the serrated tapeworm, unarmed, 8 to 15 inches long and 54 inch broad; the broad tapeworm, unarmed, 12 to 18 feet long, segments showing a waving posterior border; the white tapeworm, 18 inches to 7 feet long, 10 to 12 min. broad, unarmed; in tissues, die narrow-necked tapeworm (diving bladder worm) which becomes the mature Tsenia Marginata in the dog; the Ccenurus Cerebralis (rather rare) in the brain which passes into the Tania Canurus in the dog, and the Echinococcus Cyst which is the Taenia Echinococcus in the dog. Echinococcus being a well-known disease in man, to the ox belongs the odium of forming a link in the chain of its survival. Treatment: after a few days' fast give powdered male shield fern or areca nut, to 1 oz., to the host of the mature tapeworm with an active purgative (Epsom salts 1 to 2 lbs.).
Liver Flukes (Distoma Hepaticum), to 1 inch long, and Lanceolatum, inch long, are fiat, leaf-shaped parasites found in the gall ducts of cattle or of other domestic animals, and the latter of man, near ponds, swamps and wet lands, where there are fresh water snails that harbor the undeveloped fluke as a sporo cyst. The successive stages of development
in the fluke are: (1) The egg in the droppings of the host; (2) the embryo, a fiat organism, like a microscopic fluke in fresh water; (3) the Sporocyst in a fresh water snail; (4) the Redia again floating free in water; (5) in summer often Daughter Redia; (6) in autumn, Cercaria encysted on stems of water plants; (7) these grasses being eaten by mammals the flukes are set free by gastric digestion and pass into the first intestine, and thence into the gall ducts to form the mature flukes. It seems as if the risks of such a long chain of changes would arrest the increase or even annihilate the fluke, but in wet soils with abun dance of fresh water snails, and heavy stocking with sheep, cattle or swine, the parasite pros pers and multiplies, and the fluke plague is constantly increased and extended. The vic tims lose condition, become anarnic and weak, dropsical in lower parts of the body and inter nally and die. Prevention is not to be sought by withdrawing all stock from the land when the products of the soil are so precious. Thor ough drainage is the true alternative and until the land is well dried the cattle and sheep may be confined to dry areas or indoors, by the disuse of all fresh water supplies, the charg ing with sea salt of all retained drinking sources, the adoption of silos and well-salted ensilage, or well-salted dry food when ensilage is not in use and the liberal salting of all re tained pastures (as far as possible without stopping their growth). These are the funda mental precautions needed. The 30,000 eggs deposited at one laying of the fluke constitute a terrible risk if any loopholes are left. Every precaution must be taken to see that no fluke infested animal can escape to spread the pest on wet lands as yet free from its curse. A census of fluke carriers may be kept and the victims restrained from traffic (except for im mediate slaughter on the premises) unless first cleared of the parasite. Even the gathering of live stock for sale, market or for some other sanitary object, though called under gov ernment control, cannot palliate the evil done or rendered possible. Frogs and toads have been cultivated in the waters of Hawaii, and carp in the Columbia River, to combat suc cessfully the snails and slugs that form such an important link in preserving this parasite.