W& Mr. H. J. Carter on Microscopic Filaridse. 



places of concealment. But after watching these young Guinea- 

 worms for several days, none, according to the best of my 

 remembrance (for I have mislaid the record of the experiments), 

 lived beyond the tenth day ; at all events, they all died off so 

 quickly, that it led me to the inference that, if they survived so 

 short a time under such apparently favourable circumstances, 

 they could not be expected to live much longer, if even so long^ 

 when they might happen to get into a pool of fresh water, with 

 equally unimpaired vitality, — an occurrence^ again, which could 

 only take place during the bathing of a person possessing an 

 extruded Dracunculus, since the delicate, soft state of a young 

 Guinea-worm on leaving the parent is such that its death would 

 be inevitable in a few moments, if not liberated under water. 



On another occasion, a little solution of glue was added to 

 some young Guinea-worms which, with equal care, had been 

 transferred from the parent to a small saucer in which there was 

 alittle portion of gelatinized Nostoc, but no clay ; and here they 

 were all dead by the fifth day. 



To this I may add the results of Dr. Forbes's experiments, 

 who gave the young of a Guinea- worm, fresh from a sepoy's leg, 

 to two pups, and on examining one four, and the other twenty- 

 four hours afterwards, found them (the young Guinea-worms) 

 "dead in the mucus of the stomach and duodenum ;" not one of 

 them showed the least signs of vitality*. Those he placed in 

 pure well- or tank-water " died generally the fourth, fifth, or 

 sixth day after birth ;" while others placed in " impalpable clay, 

 partially covered with water, and exposed to the sun,^^ lived, in 

 one experiment, to the twentieth day, but did not gain " one 

 particle of increase in their size.^' So that the want of power 

 thus manifested to maintain an independent existence tends to 

 the conclusion that the young Guinea-worm is not a propagative 

 agent of the species. 



The next point for consideration is whether Filaria Medinensis 

 originates in the human body ; and this is at once answered in 

 the negative, if we are right in assuming that its young ones 

 are unpropagative, since the fact of its existence being confined 

 to tropical regions, and Europeans not getting it unless they 

 have been in these regions, proves, if it be not propagated by its 

 young ones, that the embryos from which it is derived must 

 come from some other source, and that, too, extraneous to the 

 human body. 



We have now to consider by what course and under what 

 form it is introduced into the body. As regards the former, 

 the fact that multitudes occur in the legs and feet, while its fre- 

 quency of occurrence in other parts diminishes rapidly with the 

 * Trans. Med. and Phys. Soc. Bombay, vol. i. p. 221 (1838). 



