The larvae traveled through the body to the small intestine. The threadlike larvae could enter a person's body through the skin-usually the foot. When southerners walked barefooted through feces-contaminated soil, they might touch hookworm larvae. They often did not wear shoes because of the warm climate and a lack of money. People used the great outdoors or chamber pots-containers kept under the bed mainly for nighttime bathroom breaks and dumped outside the next morning. In the early 1900s, many North Carolinians did not have bathrooms inside or outside their homes.
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Once the eggs hatch, hookworm larvae look for a new host. The eggs exit the host's body through feces. A female hookworm can lay thousands of eggs every day. Less than half an inch long, white adult hookworms attach themselves to a person's small intestine and feed on blood.
![what kills hookworms in humans what kills hookworms in humans](https://www.disabled-world.com/pics/1/combantrin.jpg)
Parasites survive by feeding off a living host. Along with malaria and yellow fever, hookworm disease came from Africa during the slave trade. Hookworm disease was one of three major diseases that had plagued the South since the early 1800s. But the germ these people were attacking wasn't a germ at all. From 1909 to 1914, doctors, public health officials, and northern businessmen worked to destroy what they called the "germ of laziness." They believed such a germ caused many of the South's problems-poverty, a sickly population, and economic underdevelopment. In the beginning of the twentieth century, a battle was fought in North Carolina and ten other southern states. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian.
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Hookworms "What’s Eating You, Lazybones?"