CHAPTER XV.

INTERNAL PARASITES :— SYMPTOMS OF THE PRESENCE
                                    OF PARASITES.

            PARASITES IN THE ALIMENTARY CANAL.

This is a subject of the greatest importance, and is deserving of
the careful and earnest attention of all those persons who may be
placed in charge of these valuable animals. Though Gilchrist, in
his work on elephants published in 1841, and others since then have
mentioned the subject, we owe the greater part of the knowledge
we now possess to the late Dr. Cobbold the eminent Helminthologist,
and Colonel Hawkes late of the Commissariat Department.
It may be accepted as a fact that elephants in Burma are
much troubled with parasites. It is exceptional after death not to
find them in the intestines, or livers of tame and even wild
elephants. Elephants in India seem also to be much troubled with
them. Forsyth writes : " Elephants are very liable to intestinal
worms. They generally cure themselves when they get very
troublesome by swallowing from 10 to 20 pounds of earth. They
always select a red-coloured earth for the purpose. In about twelve
hours purging commences and the worms come away."

Cobbold, writing on the important part played by internal para-
sites in the production of endemics and epizooty, remarks :
" Depend upon it, many a death, hitherto reported as resulting from
inflammation of the intestines, colic, splenic apoplexy, sunstroke, or
to some other obscure cause, has been primarily due to entozoa,
the presence of which may not even have been suspected during
life." A parasite is a plant or animal which, living in or on another
plant or animal, obtains its sustenance from its host to the detriment
of the latter. In most of the larger mammals, however, there are
generally to be found certain species of worms which, so far as is
known, are not hurtful to their host. In the following lines an
endeavour will be" made to distinguish between those parasites
harmful to the animal economy and those that are not.

The internal parasites most frequently met with in the elephant
are :—