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Show 1882.] PROF. OWEN ON TRICHINA SPIRALIS. 575 Herbst gave to dogs portions of the trichinosed flesh of a badger. Some months after, the dogs were killed ; and numerous encysted larval Trichina were found in their muscular tissue '. In many villages and other localities in Germany the inhabitants had been afflicted by diseases, varying in their symptoms from those of dysentery aud pneumonia to those of acute rheumatism, the discovery of the cause of which is due to Dr. Zencker. At his hospital at Dresden was admitted a young woman, who, after a month's suffering under these symptoms, died. None of the accepted remedial measures for such seeming diseases availed. On a post mortem examination her muscles were found to be infested by numerous Trichina; but these were uncysted: similar vermicules were discovered in the intestinal mucus ; but these differed in having the genital tubes developed, in which were embryo Trichina. It was found that the patient had eaten, shortly before the illness, pork sausages. Some of the same sausages having been obtained, Zencker detected therein numerous encysted Trichina. Experiments, suggested by this case, were repeated by Leuckart and Virchow, the occasions being, unhappily, too frequent and numerous in Germany ; and the cases of a supposed epidemic which had ravaged certain localities were determined, mainly by such vivi-sectional experiments as Zencker's, to be, one and all, due to eating the flesh of trichinosed pigs in an uncooked or imperfectly cooked state. For the symptoms by which the malady now known as Trichinosis simulates several well-defined diseases from other causes, I may refer to m y paper " O n the Scientific Status of Medicine," read at the International Medical Congress held in London, 3rd August, 18812. Living larvae of Trichina, introduced into the human stomach, there and in the intestinal tract rapidly acquire maturity, develop their generative organs and products; and, being viviparous, the larvae, in vast numbers, perforate the intestinal tunics, gain admission to the capillaries, are carried by the veins to the right half of the heart, are diffused through the lungs, are returned to the left cavities of the heart, are distributed by the arteries to the rest of the body, but, by a peculiar organic attraction, make their escape from the vascular system and settle in the muscular tissue, within the sarco-lemma ; and there they grow and cause such changes in the plasma effused by their irritation, as to enclose themselves, usually in a few coils, in the elliptic cysts which at one stage of condensation have been taken for hydatids, and at a later stage, through accumulation of earthy particles, for diffused gouty deposits. 1 Annales des Sciences Naturelles (Zoologie), 1852. 2 Transactions of the Congress, vol. iii. p. 440. |
