Now there’s a title to arouse one’s curiosity.

The training of the immune system so that it can distinguish “self” from “non-self” is something we take for granted. Maybe we shouldn’t. It begins to appear that for many, if not all people, exposure to worms in early life is a significant part of that training. Without it we may end up with autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s, asthma, autism, MS, etc.

Many patients with Crohn’s disease are now being treated successfully with worms such as the whipworm, Trichuris trichiura. It’s a long story but excitingly told by Rob Dunn in “The Wild Life of our Bodies” and by Moises Velasquez-Manoff in “An Epidemic of Absence.” Evolution has a curious bag of tricks and we would do well to pay attention to the entire ecosystem of which we are only one small part. That includes all the microbes we are so familiar with but also our helminth friends that we tend to think so revolting. Maybe our exquisite public health and sanitation systems have given us a back-handed slap by eliminating these “parasites.”

Have you taken a worm to lunch lately? (They don’t eat very much.)

Gordon Short, MD

In the book of Samuel in the Old Testament is the following text: “But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.” 1 Samuel 5:6 (KJV)

What are Biblical “emerods” (KJV)? “Hemorrhoids” as in some other translations? “Tumors” as in more recent translations? Or buboes?

Most people know about the Black Death, the plague that killed a third to a half of the population of Europe in a few years around 1350 AD. But how many know of the plague among the Philistines about 1320 BC? In 1 Samuel 5 & 6 there is a description of a plague of swellings in the groins of the victims (“they had emerods in their secret parts”). When the Philistines interpreted the plague as a result of their angering the God of the Israelites by their capturing of the Ark of the Covenant, the Philistines determined to send the Ark back with a guilt offering consisting of five gold “emerods” and five gold rats. Obviously they associated rats with the plague which certainly suggests that this was indeed bubonic plague.

Now if only they had known of the rat fleas, they might have sent an offering of five gold fleas instead of the rats and saved themselves considerable gold!

Gordon Short, MD