In 1974, my first graduate student telephoned me late one night.  He exclaimed that “I was really going to proud of him, since he just passed two rather large worms”.  While assuring him that pride was probably not the best attribute to describe being parasitized, I questioned him about his “companions”.  While he was answering, I was thinking about any high risk group he might belong to and none came to mind.  He told me that one worm was about 10” long and the other about 6” long. 

    As an undergraduate of California, I knew he had a rigorous invertebrate zoology course and should be aware of  the common parasitic worms of humans.  I asked him if it was a tapeworm or an ascarid which seemed the only possibilities given the size of the worms.  He answered that it was neither a tape nor an ascarid, because its peculiar gross morphology didn’t fit either of those two categories. I began to think of any other possibility that would explain the presence of these worms passed in feces.  I then asked him (almost jokingly) if he been eating any insects lately.  There was a long pause after which he told me the following.  One night about a month before, he went for a walk in a forest near his house.  The sky was cloudless and he was lost in thought admiring the stars.  At that point, an insect, (presumably a beetle) flew into his mouth.  It lodged so far down in this throat, that despite numerous attempts to cough it out, he generated an excess of saliva and swallowed. 

    While he was relating this to me, I was reading up on a worm, that normally infects pigs but has infected humans on extremely rare occasions.  The worm is Macracanthorhyncus hirudinaceous otherwise known as the spiny-headed worm of pigs.  This worm utilizes beetles as intermediate hosts, with pigs usually becoming infected by eating grubs they encounter while rooting in the soil.  The pre-patent period (time between infection and development of adulthood) for the worm is 32 days (which nicely dovetails with his recollection of swallowing the beetle about a month before).   I became excited at the prospect of this case of accidental parasitism and suggested he bring the worms in the next day and we’d examined them together.  He mentioned that he had been experiencing a prolonged case of diarrhea and had a doctor’s appointment that evening.  I admonished him not to let the physician have the worms since physicians in those days had a relatively modest education in parasitism and few physicians would have even heard of this particular worm.

   The next day when we met, he apologized that the worm was gone.  His physician took the worm into his adjoining laboratory for examination.  After a few minutes, he heard the toilet flush.  The physician told my student it was just some undigested cabbage and suggested he chew his halupkies (a local ethnic delight) a little better.  Nevertheless, if he truly were parasitized in this crazy turn of events, he likely would still show the presence of egg capsules from this worm in his stool .  I suggested he collect a stool sample and not surprisingly, using the zinc-sulfate floatation technique,  egg capsules of this worm were identified in his sample, validating my guess and providing me with a story, I relish re-telling and my students enjoy hearing.