I have cured the Empress of Boolampoo of a Cramp she got in her tongue by eating Pork and buttered parsnips .... The Earl of Rochester-17th Century As the modern outpouring of biological information continues at ever­ increasing pace, two kinds of reviews are needed to keep the torrent in manageable form. The one assumes a working knowledge of the field in question and tries to bring the reader up to date by reporting and assessing the recent developments. The other attempts to assimilate the recent developments into a coherent restatement of the whole subject. This book falls in the latter category. Trichinella spiralis infection has been in the medical and biological limelight for more than a century, and interest in it continues una­ bated-as evidenced by what Norman Stoll called the "perennially exuberant" research on trichinosis. The infection seems to offer some­ thing for almost everyone. For the physician, it offers a patient with painful and sometimes fatal disease; for the public-health official, a threat to the commonweal; for the experimental biologist, a life cycle that is unique yet easily and rapidly maintained in the laboratory; for the field ecologist, a symbiont with an affinity for an extraordinary range of wildlife species; for the pork producer, a poorer profit; for the cook, a culinary constraint; and for the diner, a dietary danger. Yet, despite this breadth of interest, and the cascade of new data, the only comprehensive books on the subject in English are those of S.E.