Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- 1 African trypanosomes and their VSGs
- 2 Malaria: the real killer
- 3 The HIV–AIDS vaccine and the disadvantage of natural selection: the yellow fever vaccine and the advantage of artificial selection
- 4 Lyme disease: a classic emerging disease
- 5 The discovery of ivermectin: a ‘crapshoot’, or not?
- 6 “You came a long way to see a tree”
- 7 Infectious disease and modern epidemiology
- 8 The ‘unholy trinity’ and the geohelminths: an intractable problem?
- 9 Hookworm disease: insidious, stealthily treacherous
- 10 The spadefoot toad and Pseudodiplorchis americanus: an amazing story of two very aquatic species in a very dry land
- 11 The schistosomes: split-bodied flukes
- 12 Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Halipegus occidualis: their life cycles and a genius at work
- 13 Trichinosis and Trichinella spp. (all eight of them, or is it nine?)
- 14 Phylogenetics: a contentious discipline
- 15 Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis neurona, and Neospora caninum: the worst of the coccidians?
- Summary
- Index
- References
11 - The schistosomes: split-bodied flukes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue
- 1 African trypanosomes and their VSGs
- 2 Malaria: the real killer
- 3 The HIV–AIDS vaccine and the disadvantage of natural selection: the yellow fever vaccine and the advantage of artificial selection
- 4 Lyme disease: a classic emerging disease
- 5 The discovery of ivermectin: a ‘crapshoot’, or not?
- 6 “You came a long way to see a tree”
- 7 Infectious disease and modern epidemiology
- 8 The ‘unholy trinity’ and the geohelminths: an intractable problem?
- 9 Hookworm disease: insidious, stealthily treacherous
- 10 The spadefoot toad and Pseudodiplorchis americanus: an amazing story of two very aquatic species in a very dry land
- 11 The schistosomes: split-bodied flukes
- 12 Dicrocoelium dendriticum and Halipegus occidualis: their life cycles and a genius at work
- 13 Trichinosis and Trichinella spp. (all eight of them, or is it nine?)
- 14 Phylogenetics: a contentious discipline
- 15 Toxoplasma gondii, Sarcocystis neurona, and Neospora caninum: the worst of the coccidians?
- Summary
- Index
- References
Summary
Humanity has but three great enemies; fever, famine, and war; of these, by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.
Sir William Osler (1849–1919)As I have written elsewhere in this tome, there were two important contributions that allowed those working in the field of parasitology to make breakthrough discoveries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first was the microscope. It was the Dutch rug trader, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who began to develop and refine this technology in the seventeenth century. Robert Hooke, an early British microscopist and a contemporary of the resourceful Dutchman, created what was ultimately to evolve into one of the most powerful of all biological concepts, in fact, one that still is being cultivated today. While looking through one of his primitive scopes one day, Hooke noted that the structure of a piece of cork he had sliced was divided internally into what he called “cellulae”. With this observation, the cell theory was borne.
The contribution of van Leeuwenhoek provided the way for technology to eventually take us inside cells and build on Hooke's observation. The cell theory, along with Darwin's evolutionary theory, unquestionably did more to alter the biological landscape than any other conceptualization. There was, however, a widely held idea that had to be purged before significant biological research could progress.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Parasites and Infectious DiseaseDiscovery by Serendipity and Otherwise, pp. 265 - 281Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007