An aside, but reading the accounts of the medical treatment the explorers had to endure after is a reminder of how ineffective modern medicine is, or at least how much further we have yet to go:<p>They literally were taking poison and hoping that they would outlive the parasite under those conditions. In the case where a parasite might be hiding anywhere in your body this is probably still the only thing you can really hope to do, but it feels like trying to burn down your house to get rid of a rat infestation.