Trichiniasis

Although lower animals are the normal hosts for Trichinella spiralis, man may be accidentally infected by eating insufficiently cooked or raw trichinous meat. By trichinous meat is meant meat in which the larvae of Trichinella spiralis have become encysted and require only liberation from their cystic cells, during the process of digestion, to resume their cycle of development and in turn infect their latest host. It has been said1that encysted larvae can remain alive in muscle tissue for as long as thirty years. When meat containing cysts is eaten, the wall is digested, the larvae are liberated, and the cycle once more is started. Briefly, this cycle consists in the liberation of the embryos from the cyst; their passage into the small intestine, where they grow to maturity in two or three days; the fertilization of the female by the male; the burrowing of the anterior end of