Hydatid Disease in England

Abstract

Hydatid disease is not a rare disease in this country, although its frequency is much less than in Iceland and in the countries with extensive sheep farming—for example, Australia and the Argentine. While investigating the pathological conditions of food animals, I visited the Birmingham public abattoir daily for several years, and every day saw the viscera of sheep, cattle, or pigs infested with the parasite of this disease. Some herds were extensively infested, others free. In few cases only a solitary cyst was discovered in the animal; in the majority the cysts were multiple, almost completely destroying the normal tissue. The organs so infested were greatly increased in bulk and weight; in some cases cows' livers weighing 200 to 250 lb. were seen, the normal being about 14 lb. (Figs. 1 and 4). Examples of human infestation are seen in hospitals from time to time, and these always attract attention by the variety of the manifestations of the parasitic invasion and by the interesting characteristic features of the hydatid cyst and its contents. No fewer than three hundred articles relative to cases of hydatid disease have been published during the last five years. That we see the disease so frequently in food animals and occasionally in man indicates that conditions are allowed to exist which permit of the completion of the life-cycle of a parasite capable of producing a very dangerous disease in human beings.