Parasites plagued Roman soldiers at Hadrian's Wall

Parasites used to be ubiquitous before we had medication to kill them. There's even a (not very well supported) theory that these parasites helped with allergies by moderating immune system. They releasing chemicals to lower immune activity in order to protect themselves, so the idea that we had these for thousands of years and basically are made to have them is intriguing. It's called "helminthic therapy" and it's considered alternative medicine but there is some academic interest. Results in clinical trials have been mixed. Perhaps the future is just synthetic hookworm proteins that regulate your immune system as our ancestors once had.

A very interesting read on this topic is Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. Fascinating life cycles that involve parasites and sometime multiple hosts. It seems having parasites is the norm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_Rex

I live with amazing technology all around me, and I often take it for granted. But whenever I take mebendazol (against e.g. pinworm) I think about my ancestors, and how they just had to live with it!

Same with the viking coprolites found in Jorvik/York?

It would seem reasonable to say on a statistical sample of 1 we have no reason to believe this was common or uncommon, or do we say on the basis we found one, the assumption is that it was universal?

We know some things like floor rushes were picked to deter fleas, were there oral or rectal treatments which worked for worms?

TL;DR Fecal matter from Vindolanda fort dated around 90 AD contains eggs of intestinal worms, and traces of antibodies to Giardia duodenalis.

Nothing of this is really news as not having parasitic worms is very recent development, and getting G. duodenalis with unsanitized water continues to be common today. Healthy immune system can deal with it, as it could in 90 AD, hence antibodies.

The story is an obvious attempt to produce as much words from as few facts as possible, and the headline is meaningless.

I find that observation unsurprising. What would be more interesting is the relative incidence between outlying forts and interior urban centres. The article mentions a couple of papers on urban fecal matter, so maybe that answer is available. I can create hypothetical cases for either location to be higher or lower than the other.