Relationships between Schistosomes and their Molluscan Hosts in Africa

Abstract

Some years ago I suggested that a medical malacologist must not only learn to think like a population of snails but that he must also try to see those snails through the eye-spots of populations of trematode miracidia. For the past ten years I have been attempting to perform this unlikely combined feat. As time passes my tendency has been to concentrate on the second part of the contortion, partly because as a helminthologist it is natural to take a worm's-eye view of life and partly because it is very easy to become absorbed in the biology of the snails for their own sake. We should remember that if molluscs were not essential hosts to some parasites of man and domestic animals there would be no justification for a symposium on medical malacology.