In July 1944, physician researcher Claude Barlow ingested over 200 schistosome worms to carry back to the United States from Egypt to study whether domestic snails could become infected and introduce the disease into the United States. Attempts to send infected snails, the intermediate host, by mail had been unsuccessful. He refused treatment, despite being desperately ill by December, so as not to lose the eggs for further study. He finally passed 4,630 eggs in his semen and 200 eggs in his urine. The U.S. government decided not to use the eggs, so his self-sacrifice was to no avail. It was November 1945 before he finally cleared all the parasites, after treatment with tartar emetic.