Worms (Helminths)

Abstract

The following chapters deal with animals, which are summarized under the trivial name worms (Greek: helminths), although (except for their outer appearance) they differ considerably with respect to their morphology, physiology and their reactions on medicaments. They are different from Protozoa (Chap. 4) by the fact that only as many stages are developed in a host as are ingested by the host as eggs or have individually entered as larvae, while single protozoans may reproduce permanently “in a host to reach giant amounts of individuals. In contrast to protozoans, helminths are able to produce large amounts of infectious larvae inside intermediate hosts and thus balance the lacking amounts of produced individuals inside the final hosts.