| OCR Text |
Show 1882.] PROF. O W E N ON TRICHINA SPIRALIS. 573 Thus it is plain that, of the two accomplished officers of the great Hospital and Medical School of Guy's, the Prosector or Anatomical Demonstrator came to the conclusion that the corpuscles in question were a minute species of Hydatid or Cysticercus ; and the Physician inclined to the belief that they were ova of a new species of Dipterous insect ; but Dr. Addison candidly owns " an unwillingness to draw an absolute inference from his experiment." The contents of the cyst were neither seen nor suspected by either observer. Such was the state of knowledge when, early in February 1835, I received from Mr. Wormald, Demonstrator of Anatomy at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, in which Medical School I then held the office of ' Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology,' portions of the muscular tissue of a subject to which his attention had been called on account of a gritty sensation perceived in dissection, and which, from the rapid blunting of the scalpels employed, he considered to be caused by deposition of specks of earthy matter. This was the sole indication which reached me when I made the microscopical investigation, resulting in the discovery of the worm, as detailed in m y ' Memoir' communicated to the Zoological Society of London, February 24th, 1835. In the course of the investigation I inferred that the cysts containing the worm defined as " Trichina spiralis" were the corpuscles previously described by Hilton as " Cysticerci.''' At p. 321 of my ' Memoir' I give the facts and inferences which led me to reject the conclusion that the cyst was a kind of Hydatid or Cysticercus, and state " that the ' cyst' is adventitious, foreign to the Entozoon, and composed of the cellular substance of the muscles infested, morbidly altered by the irritation of the worm"1. At the time of this discovery I was unaware of the fact, subsequently noticed in my paper, that Mr. (now Sir James) Paget had taken portions of the affected muscles to the British Museum, where they were microscopically examined in the Botanical Department, and the wormlet in the cyst clearly seen. Subsequently to the publication of ' Watson's Lectures,' which gave rise to other expressions of opinion besides Littre's, it was announced that both Hilton's and my observations had been anticipated by an eminent Professor of Physiology of Heidelberg. In the issue of the 'Times' newspaper of February 10th, 1866, insertion is given to the following * Note' from " T. S. Cobbold, M.D., F.R.S., of No. 84 Wimpole Street:"-" Sir, If Mr. Jabez Hogg is in error respecting the discovery of Trichina, so also is the Curator of Guy's Museum. The 'little bodies' were first noticed by Tiedemann, in the year 1822, thus anticipating Mr. Peacock by six years." No reference to the work or publication containing the record of Tiedemann's alleged discovery was given ; and the only account which could have suggested or served as a basis of the letter to ' The Times,' I found in the following German periodical-Froriep's 'Notizen,' Band i. S. 64 (1821). It appears as a record of a pathological appearance observed by the eminent Professor of Physiology 1 Zool. Trans, loc. cit. p. 322. |
