People who grew up in rural areas should have this experience, that is, when they were children, they had roundworms in their stomachs for unknown reasons, and they needed to take deworming medicine to completely eliminate the roundworms in their bodies. However, if you don't pay attention to hygiene, roundworms will appear again after a short period of time. So what exactly is going on? Roundworms

Although humans are exposed to a large number of microorganisms and eggs every day, due to the strong stomach acid of the human body, many microorganisms and eggs will be eroded by gastric acid, lose their activity, and cannot infect humans.

But roundworms are an exception. Their eggs can resist the erosion of human gastric acid and reach the intestines. The eggs will hatch into larvae in the small intestine and hide in the small intestine to eat incompletely digested food by humans. food, causing wasting and malnutrition in humans.

When the larvae develop into adult worms in the small intestine, the female will lay eggs here. The roundworm eggs will enter the external environment with the feces and cause roundworm infection through fecal-oral contact, so roundworms are a An infectious disease.

Let me say more here, fecal-oral transmission does not mean that humans come into direct contact with feces and then touch the mouth, but after feces comes into contact with food or water sources, and when these contaminated food and water sources enter the human body, It can cause human infection with ascariasis.

In the past, living conditions in rural areas were poor, and many families would use human feces as organic matter to fertilize agricultural products, causing the agricultural products to be contaminated by roundworms.

These contaminated foods can lead to roundworm infection if eaten without being thoroughly washed. If roundworm infection is not treated, it is likely to lead to malnutrition, cough and fever, and in severe cases, intestinal obstruction, resulting in a decrease in quality of life.

However, the treatment of ascariasis is relatively simple. Generally, it can be cured by taking a little anti-parasitic medicine. But if you don't pay attention to hygiene, you may continue to be infected with roundworms.

(Anthelmintic drug Baotatang) Why are roundworms so rare now?

I once heard a story. After a medical student discovered that he had roundworms, the teacher who taught infectious diseases was very happy and asked him not to take medicine in a hurry, but to donate his feces and provide fresh roundworm specimens. This is because the roundworm specimens in the classroom have not been updated in nearly 10 years.

This story also shows that the current incidence of roundworms is very low. So what have we done right to control the spread of roundworms in just 10 years?

Generally speaking, there are three steps required to spread an infectious disease to others: source of infection, route of transmission, and susceptible groups. The reason why we control the spread of roundworms is because we cut off the transmission routes of roundworms.

In the past, many rural areas did not have running water, which made water inconvenient. Therefore, personal hygiene such as washing hands before meals and after using the toilet was not done well enough, which gave opportunities for the spread of roundworms.

Now, even remote mountainous areas have installed running water. At the same time, the popularization of compulsory education has made more rural people aware of the importance of personal hygiene, leaving little chance for roundworm eggs to enter the human body. , so the infection rate will decrease until it disappears completely. Changes in parasites

In addition to roundworms, fleas and lice, which were previously common in rural areas, have also lost their living space, and their incidence among the population is getting lower and lower, or even disappearing completely.

In the past, in addition to personal hygiene, part of the reason why parasites were rampant in rural areas was that people and animals had too intensive contact in the past.

In the past, pigs were raised in rural areas directly in the corner of their own yard. The excrement after pig excretion could not be cleaned in time, resulting in human living space being contaminated by animal feces, so that some parasites would be transferred from animals. transferred to humans, the most common of which are fleas.

Nowadays, some rural areas prohibit households from raising livestock, and some places have installed sewers, which can clean up animal feces in a timely manner, cutting off the source of infection to a certain extent, resulting in a decrease in parasite infection rates, so now roundworms , lice, fleas, etc. are becoming increasingly rare. Summary

In fact, there is a big difference between today's rural areas and the past. In the past, due to imperfect living facilities, mixed living between people and animals, and personal hygiene, it was easy to come into contact with various parasites. Nowadays, the conditions in many rural areas are comparable to those in cities, which makes parasites lose their living conditions. Therefore, the infection rate of roundworms is getting lower and lower, until it becomes a rare disease.

People born in the 1980s should be very impressed. When I was studying at that time, basically every semester, the school would give out pagoda candy to students twice. I don’t remember the taste of that pagoda candy now, but it was very delicious.

After taking the medicinal pagoda candy, there will be curved roundworms in the latrines of the school toilets and in the lumps of rice fields the next day. When you go to the toilet, you will actually know whether you have pulled out roundworms, especially when the roundworms are still alive. The roundworm will squirm on its own, and sometimes when it is pulled halfway, the roundworm won't fall off and has to be pulled off by oneself. That feeling is quite scary anyway.

Every semester, I eat pagoda candy. When I was in the fourth grade, the school changed to a new roundworm tablet. That kind of roundworm tablet was not delicious, and pagoda candy also started at that time. It disappeared, and from then on, the sweetness of the pagoda candy could only be slowly forgotten in the memory.

So. Why were children in rural areas more likely to get roundworms in the past? This is mainly related to personal hygiene. Disease enters through the mouth. Roundworms are all eaten.

In the past, children in rural areas had poor awareness of hygiene. They drank raw water when they were thirsty. They also liked to go to the fields to steal sweet potatoes, kudzu, and various fruits to eat. The stolen sweet potatoes were not washed. They wiped off the mud with their clothes, gnawed the sweet potato skin clean with their teeth, and ate them directly. The stolen fruits were basically eaten directly.

It is because of drinking raw water and eating dirty things that the roundworm eggs are also eaten into the stomach. Over time, the roundworms in the stomach will enter the intestines and become parasitic there.

After getting ascariasis, the child will become noticeably thinner and suffer from unexplained abdominal cramps from time to time. In the past, parents were actually quite experienced. When they saw that their children were obviously losing weight, they would immediately buy them roundworm tablets.

So why don’t today’s children have roundworms?

It is impossible for children today to have no roundworms at all. It is just that there are fewer children than before. This is mainly due to the fact that parents now have better hygiene awareness.

Teach children from an early age to wash their hands frequently, wash fruits before eating them, drink boiled water, eat things that fall on the ground, and eat sweet potatoes, kudzu and other vegetables before they are cooked. Anyway, today’s parents are much better at educating their children about hygiene than our parents were at that time. We know that ascariasis is a disease that is transmitted through the mouth. If you pay attention to food, the probability of getting the disease will be much less.

And now in schools, in addition to strengthening health promotion, like in our rural areas, although schools no longer distribute roundworm tablets, parents still go to pharmacies to buy medicine for their children once a year.

In short. Children are much less likely to get roundworms these days, but not completely. Ascariasis can still be avoided as long as you prevent it from what you eat.

In the past, we didn’t pay much attention to personal hygiene in rural areas. We rarely drank hot water when we were thirsty. We thought it was troublesome to let it cool down. In the summer, many children rarely had this kind of patience. Yes, when they are thirsty, they just scoop out a ladle of water and drink it, and some even lie down in the river and drink it. When I was a child, I even drank water from a small ditch when I was thirsty while working in the fields. Because this raw water is not heated, it contains a large number of roundworm eggs. These eggs enter the human body through this method, and roundworms will develop. This is an important cause of ascariasis. In the past, rural parents did not pay much attention to their children's education and allowed them to play on their own every day. It was not surprising that they would get ascariasis.

In the past, almost everyone had "ascariasis". So why is ascariasis now gone?

First, with the improvement of living standards, there are fewer ways to ingest eggs. In the past, living conditions in rural areas were limited. Farmers drank water directly without boiling it. The seemingly clean and unpolluted water actually contained roundworm eggs. If you drank it, you would get roundworms in your stomach. There are many ways for eggs to enter the human body. Children rolling on haystacks and playing in the mud in the village may actually contain roundworm eggs.

Second, health awareness has increased. In the past, I didn't pay much attention to hygiene when eating. I often ate without washing. Some of the food contained roundworm eggs that were eaten into my stomach, and I got ascariasis. If you eat unclean food, do not wash crops that have been applied with farmyard manure thoroughly, or have unhygienic living habits, there will still be a chance of roundworm egg infection.

Third, children are now well-raised. In the past, the children at home were left unattended and allowed to roll on the floor. Today, children are well-raised and naturally clean and hygienic.

Fourth, rural people now have higher and higher requirements for sanitary conditions. For example, in the past, many people would put toilets together with places where pigs and chickens were raised, which were closer to their homes. , although easy to care for, it is also prone to breeding a large number of pests and diseases, etc.

When we were young, it was common to have roundworms in our stomachs. In the fields outside the village, in the huts at home, wherever someone poops, you will find roundworms. The largest ones are as thick as chopsticks and more than half a foot long.

At that time, the way to cure roundworms was to eat pagoda candy. Pagoda candy is like a cone and comes in various colors. It tastes sweet and delicious.

I remember that when I was in a social high school, I suddenly felt a severe stomachache that I couldn’t bear anymore, so I was sent to a social health center by my classmates.

The doctor is an old man with white hair. Because he looks like the old fox, a spy in the movie, he is called the old fox.

The old fox pressed my stomach and said, there are so many roundworms in your stomach, they are all coiled together and the intestines are blocked, how can it still hurt? I pressed hard and found that a section of intestine was indeed hard and felt stiff.

The old fox gave me some medicine and asked me to take it. I had a lot of diarrhea in the afternoon, and there must have been twenty or thirty roundworms in it.

Why don’t today’s children have roundworms? First, it is the result of the country’s great efforts in governance. Free pagoda candy is distributed to children every year to kill the roundworms in their stomachs. Secondly, children's dietary hygiene has improved, preventing roundworm eggs from entering the intestines through the mouth. Therefore, it is now difficult to remove roundworms in children's stomachs. I found these things in my stomach.

I am a rural person. When I was a child, I often had roundworms in my stomach. When the roundworms attack, I will have pain in my stomach. Adults also say that you should not take anti-worming medicine during the pain because it will cause chaos in the stomach. If the pain is not treated, the roundworms will grow more and more, which scares me.

I remember one time, while playing, a roundworm came out directly from the back. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it felt weird. Then I reached into my pants and pulled it out. When I realized When I was there, my scalp instantly felt numb, it was so scary, and now I feel so sick even thinking about it, it’s a lingering shadow. Because of this incident, I didn’t dare to go to the toilet after taking the anti-worming medicine [I burst into tears], because the medicine at that time would not kill the roundworms!

To sum up the reason, when I was a child, I didn’t know how to be hygienic. I scratched here and there, and I didn’t know how to wash my hands. So I swallowed the roundworm eggs into my stomach without knowing it. Another point is that when I was young, the rural environment was generally not very good, and not many people paid attention to hygiene. The vegetables and crops grown in the fields were all splashed with excrement, and the excrement was usually composed of people. Pig excrement, so when eating these crops, if they are not washed thoroughly, roundworms are very likely to appear in the stomach.

Generally speaking, things are much better now. Most people pay attention to personal hygiene, and the overall hygiene awareness has improved. In rural areas, edible dishes and the like are washed very clean. Children, especially, are required to wash their hands before eating. Don't grab things randomly and provide your children with good supervision and education. Therefore, roundworms are rarely seen in rural areas today.

I believe many people born in the 1980s remember having stomachaches when they were children. Our parents took us to the doctor. The doctor gave us food, pagoda candy, and later pulled out long and moving roundworms

The topic’s words reminded me of my childhood. In the 1960s and 1970s, in the countryside, the children at that time had things to eat and wear that today’s young people can’t even imagine. Not to mention things to play with, there is nothing but stones, rubbish, and mud. None of the children are fat, and nine out of ten are skinny. They live in poverty to begin with. They eat more than one meal, so how can their bodies grow well? In addition, the roundworms in their stomachs also eat up the nutrients in their bodies. , therefore, most of them have sallow complexion, thin muscles, and weak constitution. So, why are the roundworms in the stomach of children no longer present? The main reasons are as follows: 1. Due to bad living habits

In the 1960s and 1970s, not only the living standard was poor, but the quality of life was also impossible to talk about. There was not enough food to eat. There are too many children and not enough food to eat, causing the children to go hungry every day. The adults are busy working for the production team all day long and have no time to discipline the children. The children can only look after the older ones. During the play, as long as they see something edible, no matter whether it is clean or not, Clean it, wipe it with your hands or clothes and put it in your mouth. Furthermore, when you are thirsty, whether it is pit water, river water, pond water or well water, you can hold it in your hands and drink it. This kind of living habit has no reason to be insect-free. Things are different now. People take care of their children a hundred times more. They put hygiene first when eating and drinking. Even if they want to get roundworms in their stomachs, they don't have the conditions. 2. Caused by the poor living environment

In the 1960s and 1970s, collective public ownership was still the mainstay. Adults were busy going to work every day, while children, except for going to school, worked in small groups. playing together. But there was not a single toy, and the children had only old materials to draw from. One is stone pieces, the second is bricks, the third is lump eggs, the fourth is mud eggs, the fifth is paper pieces, the sixth is peach and apricot stones, etc. When playing with these things, some of them are dirty. Playing with mud eggs and paper pieces makes the dust fly up. Even eating is not on time. Adults make meals and put them on the table for you and ignore them. Children know how to play. I ran home when I was very hungry and ate without washing my hands. You said that this kind of unhygienic habit would prevent butterflies from developing. Especially at night, because there is no electricity and no homework at that time, the children play even more wildly. Children are everywhere on the mounds of the team, in the ditches on the slopes, and in the bays and ponds. The figure is covered in dirt and mud every day, and the adults don't wash it because they won't have to wear it the next day. Therefore, it's common to wear one piece of clothing for several months. Not to mention roundworms in the stomach, lice and gnats were all over the body. As a last resort, the children went to bed at night, and the adults rummaged through their clothes and caught lice one by one under the small kerosene lamp. Now look at the toys and clothes that children wear today. It’s like heaven or earth. It’s incomparable. Therefore, roundworms, lice, and lice are now extinct.

3. Caused by the influence of drugs

Compared with children thirty or forty years ago, in addition to the earth-shaking changes in what they eat, wear, play and the environment they live in, children today also have There is a characteristic that everyone has witnessed, that is, the amount of money children today spend on medical treatment, treatment, and epidemic prevention is astronomical compared to children in the past. Although today's children's lives are better, their physical strength is indeed very poor. They either catch colds every three days or have unexplained fevers from time to time. They have to deal with pharmacies, clinics, health centers, and large hospitals many times every year. , either getting injections or taking medicine, which made the adults have headaches and dizzy spells, so they had no choice but to take medicine continuously. For the sake of the children, which family doesn’t have piles of medicines, old ones go away, and new ones come. Continuous medication and injections will certainly have an effect on disinfecting harmful bacteria and parasites in children's intestines. Therefore, today's children no longer see roundworms.

There were a lot of roundworms in the past. I remember that in the 1960s, when I was only seven or eight years old, I would often pull out the roundworms with my hands. On the contrary, the itching in the anus is caused by roundworms, and then it slowly comes out about an inch outside the anus, so I pull it out with my hands. It was six or seven inches long. In those days, roundworms were not something to be feared. This happened to every child. They were accustomed to it, so they were not afraid. If you defecate, there will be at least a dozen of them, and sometimes there will be more than twenty. Medicine was underdeveloped at that time, and later on, pagoda sugar was introduced that could kill roundworms. As a result, there were very few of them in the 1990s. But now it is basically hard to see ascariasis, but there are very few cases. Why was there always ascariasis in the past? The reason is very simple. In the past, living conditions were poor, with poor food and clothing. Especially children often eat raw food. For example, they will eat raw rice from wild fruit fields in the mountains. Therefore, it is difficult for the stomach to digest eating too much raw food, which is especially easy to breed roundworms and is the best place for roundworms. Nowadays, living standards have improved, the health environment is much better than in the past, and medicine has been further improved. Many diseases have been eliminated! For example, the skinny head, winter melon feet are almost invisible. In the past, there were several cases of this disease in every rural village, which proves that vaccines are now very important to effectively control various diseases.

When I was a child in the countryside, everyone had seen roundworms in their stomachs. Why can’t they be seen now?

1. When we were young, we didn’t pay much attention to hygiene no matter what it was. Therefore, many things are caused by people who do not pay attention to hygiene. Moreover, after taking medicine for roundworms, the insects cannot be killed. If they are pulled out together with the stool, they are still alive. They are pulled out together with the stool, and sometimes they are pulled out. Half of them won't come out, and I have to use my hands to pull them out. It's very scary.

2. Today’s children are raised carefully by their parents, who pay great attention to personal cleanliness and hygiene. Nowadays, children have to take roundworm medicine almost once every six months. Moreover, the roundworms were killed and pulled out together with the stool, so they cannot be seen. Therefore, the roundworms cannot be seen now.

Like lice, roundworms are also an unforgettable memory for those born in the 1980s and some born in the 1990s in rural areas. Almost every rural child at that time had these two things.

Compared with the itching of lice, roundworms cause more pain to people. In addition to the pain in the stomach, they also face the fear of seeing discharged roundworms every time they go to the toilet.

Most of the children who had roundworms at that time had eaten the white cone-shaped pagoda candy. When it comes to eating pagoda candy, some children will definitely cry, not because they dislike the bitterness of the candy, but because they are afraid.

Every time I finish eating Pagoda Candy, I have to wait for a while before going to the toilet. Children often cry at this time because the roundworms will be expelled, and sometimes adults need help.

If the roundworms appear in groups, it will be difficult to pass them out of the body smoothly, and parents will need help.

This thing cannot be torn off, otherwise it will cause severe pain in the stomach. This is the author's personal experience. Every time my father gives me Pagoda Candy, I feel a little psychological burden.

At that time, almost none of the children in the village were fat, and most of them were sallow, thin, and listless. After finally eating some food, the roundworms absorbed all the nutrients.

My roundworm disease was quite serious at that time, and I would complain of stomachache all the time, and the pain would come in waves. In addition to the pain, there is also a loss of appetite, and I have no appetite for anything I see.

When my mother was cooking, she would immediately feel nauseous if she smelled the smell of cooking fumes, and would feel like vomiting because of sour water in her mouth. When I was a kid, I loved eating sweets. Every time I ate them, I would get stomachaches.

Later I learned that these reactions were caused by roundworms. Roundworms are pervasive in the stomach, and sweet foods will cause the roundworms to become extremely active, causing stomachaches.

Roundworms swim around in the stomach and will burrow in wherever there is a passage, such as the corner of the eye, biliary tract, digestive tract, etc. When I was in fifth grade, I witnessed my classmates vomiting bugs.

This was not a strange thing at the time. Most people had experienced this kind of trouble. Roundworms usually travel from the intestines to the stomach and then into the digestive tract, eventually causing nausea and vomiting.

Children at that time were very afraid of this, but they could not avoid it.

Almost all people have roundworms to some extent, and large and small roundworms are expelled from the body when going to the toilet.

Why were there so many roundworms at that time? One is related to hygiene habits, and the other is related to the overall environment. Children at that time came into contact with the earth every day and played with dirty cement.

I hardly have the habit of washing my hands and brushing my teeth, let alone taking a bath. I only rub my hands while swimming in the pond. The water was not clean, so pond water was used for washing clothes and drinking livestock.

At that time, the vegetables, melons and fruits were made from farmyard manure, which are now called green vegetables. Many rural children had the habit of eating them directly, and they rarely washed cucumbers and tomatoes.

In the era without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, there were many insects on fruits and vegetables, and many of the eggs were eaten directly. When I get home tired from playing in the summer, I just drink a ladle of cold well water.

One of the reasons that cannot be ignored is that after going to the toilet, the thing used to wipe the buttocks is not toilet paper, but brick corners, soil lumps, tiles or corn leaves, as long as it can be wiped, you can use it.

There was very little paper at that time, let alone toilet paper. This is the fastest way to get infected with roundworms. In short, there were many ways to get infected with roundworms in rural areas at that time, and it was difficult to avoid them.

Roundworm eggs are excreted in the feces and develop into rod-shaped larvae in about 10 days under appropriate conditions. After molting, they turn into infective eggs, and if ingested, the larvae will grow in the intestines.

Around the 1990s, the number of roundworms began to decrease, and most children have been freed from the trouble of roundworms. This is mainly due to the extensive use of chemical fertilizers and the fact that children are no longer good at hygiene.

As the number of eggs in the outside world decreases, the chance of children suffering from ascariasis also decreases. By the end of the 1990s, roundworms had disappeared without realizing it, and very few children were suffering from ascariasis.

Even if there are occasional roundworms, there is no need to eat the scary pagoda candy. Today's anti-parasitic drugs will make the roundworms invisible, and children do not need to worry about going to the toilet.

Lice and roundworms can be said to be the two most typical memories of the post-80s generation in rural areas, and they are also a kind of "sickness" in childhood. Almost everyone has experienced it and has endless wonderful stories to tell.

With the improvement of sanitary conditions and the development of hygienic habits, roundworms have gradually lost their living space. As long as they pay attention to hygiene, wash hands frequently, and do not eat raw food, it is difficult for roundworms to survive.