The Trematoda

Abstract

EVERY teacher of biology will no doubt agree that we have for a long time needed a single volume which gives, in the English language, a detailed account of the trematodes written from the point of view of the biologist. The medical man and the veterinarian, confronted with the serious diseases which some species of trematodes cause, have at their disposal excellent accounts of these pathogenic species which necessarily lay emphasis upon the economic, therapeutical or epidemiological aspects of the problems which they raise. In these modern text-books of parasitology two developments are clearly revealed. One is that enormous advances have been made during recent years in our knowledge, not only of the trematodes, but of other helminths also. The second is that the men who gained this new knowledge quickly learned that parasitic organisms cannot be controlled unless they are first understood, and that they cannot be understood unless they are studied precisely as the biologist studies them, namely, as organisms inseparable from their environments and following a certain mode of life in relation to other living things. The parasitologist, therefore, who wishes to control or minimize the damage inflicted upon man and his civilization by parasitic organisms must be primarily a biologist ; and nothing shows this more clearly than the fact that most of the advances which we have made in the control of parasitic organisms have been due to increases in our knowledge of their biology. Every modern text-book of parasitology recognizes this and devotes considerable space to the biological background upon which specialized information depends. The Trematoda With Special Reference to British and other European Forms. By Dr. Ben Dawes. Pp. xvi+644. (Cambridge : At the University Press, 1946.) 52s. 6d. net.