Dr. Sömmerring's Fish Tapeworm

Diphyllobothrium latum. Germany. Circa 1811.

The fish tapeworm comes from a stool sample from the German doctor Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring and is one of the oldest complete tapeworm specimens in the world.

VIENNA'S WORM DOCTOR
In 1811, Johann Gottfried Bremser, curator of the imperial and royal natural history collection in Vienna and a leading specialist in intestinal worms – also called the “worm doctor of Vienna” – sent an urgent request to his colleague to send helminths for the Viennese collection. Shortly thereafter, the German anatomist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring sent him a box containing a fish tapeworm that he had obtained from himself.
For Bremser, the gift was a treasure. Since the broad tapeworm is transferred exclusively through the consumption of raw fish, this parasite was correspondingly rare in Vienna. Only few patients of the Viennese worm doctor came from regions where raw fish was eaten. Using the complete Sömmerring tapeworm, for the first time Bremser was able to describe the head of the fish tapeworm clearly, illustrate it, and distinguish it from chain worms such as pork and beef tapeworms.
Today, there is a danger that fish tapeworm infections will increase again, above all due to increased consumption of raw fish in the form of sushi. In Austria, however, only isolated cases of infection have been documented in recent years: in dogs and in polar bears at the zoo. Tapeworms do relatively little harm to humans and animals – other than causing than a drastic vitamin B12 deficiency in some cases.