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This Podcast Will Kill You

Ep 47 Schistosomiasis: A Snail's Pace

This Podcast Will Kill You

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Health & Fitness, Science

4.817.7K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2020

⏱️ 91 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s back to your regularly scheduled programming this week with an episode on schistosomiasis (aka bilharzia), that scourge both ancient and modern. We kick off the episode by walking you through the amazingly complex life cycle of these blood flukes and the myriad of symptoms they and their eggs can cause, including a “check out the reproductive output on this one!” moment.  We then trace its early appearances in mummies (of course) and ancient writings, following that up with an overview of how imperialism drove the field of tropical medicine in its early days. To wrap up this wormy episode, we discuss the current, staggering numbers on schisto around the globe.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is exactly right.

0:03.4

This is Justin from Generation Y, and we're doing a four-part series unraveling the story

0:11.2

of Khalif Browder, a young boy falsely accused of stealing a backpack and held at Rikers Island

0:16.6

for three years without trial.

0:18.7

This story is about a young life caught in the middle of the justice system, listen to

0:23.0

Generation Y on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:27.7

Soon after my attention had been directed to the liver and its associated structures, I

0:31.8

found in the blood of the portal vein a number of long white helmets, which, with the naked

0:36.6

eye, I considered to be nematodes, but soon recognized as something new.

0:41.6

A look into the microscope revealed a splendid diastomum, with a flat body and a spiral

0:46.4

tail at least ten times as long as the body.

0:49.3

I have not yet reported the new stages of my portal vein worm.

0:52.6

It did not, as I had expected, develop into an old wives' tail but into something more

0:56.8

wonderful, a trimotode with divided sex.

1:00.9

I performed an autopsy on a boy who died of meningitis.

1:04.2

Upon opening the urinary bladder, we found lentil to pea-sized soft, spongy, excrescences.

1:10.0

When I cut through the largest of the excrescences, a white thread adhered to the knife.

1:14.8

Examining it more closely, I recognized our diastomum hematobium.

1:19.4

I searched the depth of the incision and pulled out several more.

1:22.6

The areas of the bladder mucosa were the earliest stages of the tumors appeared recovered

1:26.6

with viscous, clear mucous, containing large numbers of diastomum hematobium eggs,

1:31.8

singly ornclumps.

...

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