Mr. H. J. Carter on Dracunculus. 413 



Virgin-generation, the young female microscopic worm might 

 pass into the body already impregnated even before the genera- 

 tive organs can be detected; — that some of the microscopic 

 Filarice above alluded to have two and four minute papillary 

 eminences projecting from their heads, respectively, two of which 

 are larger than the other two, which approximates them still 

 closer to Dracunculus ; — and lastly, that the microscopic Filaria 

 not only seek a habitat (viz. the gelatinous Algse and decomposing 

 cells of vegetable matter) where they can obtain nitrogenous food 

 and elements of nutrition like those afforded by the human 

 body, but that it has occurred to me frequently to find a Nais 

 (whose habitat also is the Glceocapsa during the rainy weather) 

 with its peritoneal cavity containing one or more microscopic 

 FilaricSj equal in size to those which are dwelling in the same 

 Alga. 



It is true that we have not the means of feeding either man 

 or animals with the young microscopic Filarice, to determine if 

 this would be followed by the production of Dracunculus, as the 

 abundance of Cysticerci in '^ measly pork'' has enabled Kiichen- 

 meister, Van Beneden, Siebold, and others, to prove that the 

 latter, when taken internally, are productive of T(enia, or tape- 

 worm ; nor would this be likely to succeed if we did possess 

 such means, since it is more than probable that the embryo 

 which produces Dracunculus, whatever it may be, enters through 

 the surface of the body. Neither should we be justified in 

 plastering mud over the human body, to satisfy our curiosity in 

 this respect, while the experiment seems to be already performed 

 to our hands, as related in my '^ Note" under reference, where it 

 is shown that out of a school of fifty boys bathing and dabbling 

 more or less throughout the day in a small pond in their 

 enclosure, whose muddy sediment swarmed with the so-called 

 " Tank-worm," not less than twenty-one in one year had had 

 Dracunculus in more or less plurality ; while such was not only 

 not the case in any of the other schools of the island, but in the 

 school of which T have had medical charge for more than ten 

 years, with an average number of 346 children present, only two 

 or three cases have occurred during that time ; and microscopic 

 FilaricB do not exist, so far as I have been able to ascertain, in 

 the sedimentary deposit of the tank in their enclosure, from 

 which the children of this school are solely supplied with bathing- 

 water. 



I have only now to add, in support of the inference conveyed 

 by the above remarks respecting the origin of Dracunculus, that 

 Prof. Siebold took the larvse or caterpillars of Yponomeuta cogna- 

 tella and other Lepidopterous insects, and, having placed them in 

 wet mould which abounded with the embryos of Mermis albicans, 



