Undesirable Guests and Unwilling Hosts: Parasites in Ancient and Modern Italian Folkmedicine

UNDESIRABLE GUESTS AND UNWILLING HOSTS: PARASITES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN ITALIAN FOLKMEDICINE* WALTON BROOKS McDANIEL\ A student ofhuman nature must sometimes wonder whether the worries and dreads of man that are concerned with health or those that spring from monetary matters account for more of his bad hours in life, and whether the art of medicine has not multiplied and aggravated those worriesanddreadsasknowledgeofdiseasehasincreasedamong physicians and been more widely disseminated in popular form and often with commercial intent among their patients. There is no little fascination to be found in the examination ofcertain conceptions and procedures ofmedicine as Latin literature of the early Empire reveals them in conjunction with those ofsuch people ofItaly today as happen to live out ofreach of modern scientific knowledge. In this article we are going to deal with certain physical troubles which would be much less disturbing ifwe were as devoid offoresight and as free from fastidiousness as are the beasts ofthe field which are subject to many of the same afflictions, or even, in some cases, if the victim could visualize a little more correctly the interior of his own body. Parasiteisapicturesqueword ofGreek origin. Inthe socialusage ofclassical antiquity it brings to mind a humble guest, more or less self-invited to his host's table, earning his meal by playing the role offun-maker, flatterer , and officious performer ofeven menial services. He assures himself ofa good meal at the side ofhis patron only so long as he can amuse and blandish his feUow diners acceptably—a precarious caUing to follow in the society ofeither Athens or Rome. * Reprinted from and with the permission of Transactions and Studies ofthe College ofPhysicians ofPhiladelphia, 4th ser., vol. 15, no. 1, April 1947. (Editorial note: The article is republished here to reach a wider circle ofreaders who are not concerned with it as a technical contribution. Numerous notes ofthe original paper have been omitted with the consent ofthe author.) t Address: 4082 Malaga Avenue, Miami, Florida 33133. 82 Walton Brooks McDaniel · Italian Folkmedicine Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Autumn 1970 Equally weU named is another sort ofparasite, one that can never find a friendly disposed host, a parasite that never makes, indeed, any return whatsoever in fun, service, or flattery for the shelter and sustenance that he receives. In fact, a more undesirable and gluttonous guest to provide with food our fancy cannot readily picture. The very names that these parasites bear, Taenia solium, Oxuris vermicularis, Flasciola hepática, and the rest, however euphonious they sound to our ears, mark themas foreigners, foreignerswhojustifytheworstofxenophobicsuspicions andso anyalarm that an "America-first" type ofcitizen couldpossibly conceive. When, indeed , our physician tells us in plain English that we are playing host to tapeworms, pinworms,flukes, orsomeothermembersoftheanimalworld, our first thought is to expel them at once even by the most ignominious route that is available in our body. Fortunately for most ofus, we rarely have occasion in the United States to think of any vermicular guest as making a home in us and—still more unpleasant to contemplate—as getting his meals at our expense. AU ofus dohouse, to be sure, multitudinous vegetable organisms which we call bacteria, but they are not uniformly bad, and they are so microscopicaUy minute that the Romans lived out their lives in blissful ignorance oftheir very existence. While, however, they knew nothing ofbacteria, they cherished such quaint notions about animals that they knew did live in their bodies or that they mistakenly thoughtwereroving aroundin them, that these dependents ofours should command some interest. They merit it aU the more because some ofthe notions which the ancients cherished have survived in the folk-beliefs of our own time. There are indeed various physical sensations which readUy persuade ignorant people that they are harboring a frog in their throat or a frog, toad, lizard, or snake in the stomach, one that is only too evidently alive and kicking or squirming. The treatment which physicians ofold inflicted on some ofthe unwelcome guests ofthehumanbody offers certainparallels to the folkmedicine ofmodern Italy with which, I suspect, few classical scholars in our country are familiar. Such survivals in therapy deserve attention, I think, from anybody who is concerned with the history ofmedicine. We may...