CYSTICERCOSIS CEREBRI AND ITS OPERATIVE TREATMENT

Abstract

CYSTICERCOSIS cerebri is, unfortunately, a frequent disease in Poland. While almost unknown in the United States and considered as dying out in Western Europe, in Poland between 1921 and 1936 it accounted for about 0.29 per cent of all admissions to a large neurologic center. The inadequate control of the meat market and the lowering of the standard of hygiene and of the bodily resistance during the last war still further aggravated the situation. Thus, of the 1,879 patients admitted between 1936 and 1946 to the service of neurosurgery of the Neurologic Clinic in Warsaw, 23, or 1.22 per cent, had cerebral cysticercosis. That means that every eightieth patient was infested with Cysticercus cellulosae, the larva of Taenia solium. The first observation on cysticercosis cerebri was made in 1588 by Rumler.¹ Paracelsus,² in 1650, noted epileptic convulsions occurring in the course of this disease (Henneberg,³ 1936); yet