I had all but forgotten this story from my youth until I responded to another poster about tapeworms. Thank God there are better alternatives these days as I NEVER EVER want to witness anything like that ever again!

"This absorption action is why black walnut works so effectively against them - it contains tannin (organic iodine) juglandin, juglone and juglanic acids. It also oxygenates the blood which parasites don't like either. I know full well how tapeworms attach and feed, but there are cases, albeit very few and very far between, where a LARGE tapworm will try to migrate. In my experience this only happens when the host is weak and very ill - when the host can no longer intake enough nutrition to feed themselves AND the tapeworm. The tapeworm will move to find a better source of "food" or will try to exit the host in order to survive. The host loses weight, yet is starving and is skin and bones, yet has a potbelly. I have seen this with my own eyes - the first and last time was in 1973 when I was 18 and was allowed to help my mother and grandmother "pull" a tapeworm from a very sick elderly man. His wife brought him over from Lake Village Arkansas. My grandpa and I carried him from the car to a cot on my grandmother's porch - he literally wanted to die. He had not eaten solid foods for over a week and he was steadily retching. My grandmother made him swallow molasses, then honey, then pure cane sugar - and he was still retching. She made him lie on his left side and then she put a small jar of molasses by his mouth. He kept saying he could feel it moving up his throat and they told him just to be still and be patient. Within ONE HOUR he began choking and retching and she and my grandpa pulled the tapeworm out through his mouth- I was scared to death because I thought he was going to die, he could not breathe while they were pulling it out and his eyes were bulging out of his head. (Nobody measured it, but I feel safe in saying it was over 10 feet long - I had to take it and burn it.) That man's stomach went flat, he puked for a while, then my grandmother made him some tea - then he was HUNGRY! She fed him and he and his wife left for home. I never, ever want to see that again. EVER. My grandmother said he probably picked it up during the first world war and it had just been growing bigger and stronger until it took over his body. I don't always give the correct advice to folks, but I have my reasons behind what advice I do give."