Worms

Overview

Nearly every child has worms at some time, and many grown people carry them without knowing. Households treat them as a nuisance, like lice: a purge in spring, and another when a child grows pot-bellied and thin. They seldom kill, but a heavy infestation eats what a hungry family can least spare, and in a bad year that is the difference between a thin child and a dying one.

Cause

Worms of several kinds live in the gut, from small white threadworms to roundworms as long as a finger and flat worms many paces long. Their eggs pass out in dung and get back in on dirty hands, in water fouled with dung, on unwashed greens, and through soil on the fingers of children. Others come in the flesh of infested beasts, pigs above all, and fish eaten raw or undercooked. Flukes taken from raw fish and from water plants settle in the liver and the bowels. Dogs carry worms of their own that can pass to people.

Who It Strikes

Children take them most, because they play in the dirt and put their hands in their mouths. The fish-eating peoples know the fish-worms and flukes best: the Thaluren and Kavari of the rivers and seas. So do the Reedfolk of the lower rivers and the Gnomes of the coast harbours. Goblins eat almost anything and often carry worms without seeming the worse. The Wrought do not eat and are spared.

Signs and Course

Threadworms make an itch round the bottom at night, and a child scratches in its sleep. Roundworms and flat worms show as hunger that does not fill, a swollen belly on thin limbs, pallor, tiredness, and now and then a worm passed in the stool or, in a heavy case, coughed up or vomited. Flukes bring an ache under the right ribs, a yellowing of the eyes, and slow wasting over years.

An infestation can last for years. In a fed adult it does little; in a hungry child it stunts growth, and in anyone already sick it adds to the weakness.

Contagion

Worms pass from dung to mouth, not by breath or touch alone. Where dung reaches the drinking water or the garden, a whole village carries them. Fish-worms and meat-worms pass only through eating the flesh.

Treatment and Its Limits

Bitter herb purges for the bowels drive many worms out (see Herbs), though too strong a dose purges the patient as hard as the worm. A Vital healer makes the body hostile to them with Parasite Expel, by a body-purge cast or a herb and basin rite, but egg-laying worms need the work repeated, and a child sent back to the same water takes them again.

What keeps them off works without being understood: cooking meat and fish through, smoking, drying, and salting, washing hands, and keeping the midden away from the well.

Mortality

Worms seldom kill by themselves. A great knot of roundworms can block a child's gut and kill it, and flukes shorten the lives of some old fish-eaters. Their usual harm is quieter: smaller, weaker children, and sick people with less to fight with.

Lore and Belief

Many peoples hold that worms come from sweets, from raw fruit, or from the full moon, when they are said to stir; spring purges are timed to it. Others believe every body has its worms and only too many are a sickness. Coastal and river peoples keep firm rules about which fish may be eaten raw and which must be smoked, and those rules are mostly right.

In the Medieval Era

Worms are everywhere in the medieval present, most of all in villages where dung, water, and gardens lie close together. Households purge their children with herbs, often on a fixed day in spring. Trained healers are called for worms only when a child is failing, or when the fish-flukes have yellowed a fisher's eyes.

Where It Appears

• Vital Magic: Parasite Expel
• Herbs (brews for the bowels)
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Schools of Magic