Entozoon infesting the Muscles of the Human Body, 455 



it without much real or available knowledge of its organization being 

 thereby afforded : it embraces animala with the molecular, and others 

 with the filiform, condition of the nervous system; conditions which are 

 accompanied by different types of the digestive system, and which in- 

 dicate not merely differences of class, but even of primary division, in 

 the animal kingdom. Mr. Owen considers the animal under consider- 

 ation as being most nearly allied to that form of the Poly gastric In- 

 fusoria which is exhibited by the lower organized Vibriones of Miiller, 

 and of which Ehrenberg has composed his genera Vibrio, Spirillum^ 

 and Bacterium; and that, like the seminal Cercaria, it may be regarded 

 as an example from the lowest class of the animal kingdom having its 

 habitat in the interior of living animal bodies. Referring it, however, 

 provisionally, to the class Entozoa, in which it would indicate a new 

 order, its generic character may be thus given : 



Trichina. 



Animal pellucidum, filiforme, teres, postice attenuatum : ore lineari, 

 ano discreto nullo, tubo intestinali genitalibusque inconspicuis. (In vesici 

 externa cellulos£i, elastic^, plerumque solitarium.) 



Trichina spiralis. Trich. minutissima, spiraliter, rarb flexuos^, 

 incurva; capite obtuso, collo nullo, caudd attenuatd obtusd. (Vesicd 

 externd ellipticd, extremitatibus plerumque attenuatis elongatis.) 



Hab. in hominis musculis (prseter involuntarios) per totum corpus 

 diffusa, creberrima. 



Mr. Owen further states that within about a fortnight of the former 

 case, a second body similarly affected had been brought into the dis- 

 secting-room of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital ; and some notes were 

 furnished by Mr. Paget, who first observed the worms in the Italian, 

 with regard to the cases of the two patients while living in the Ho- 

 spital. From these it appeared that both had died after long and de- 

 bilitating illness, producing great emaciation, unaccompanied, how- 

 ever, with any eruption on the skin, or any greater loss of muscular 

 power than would probably have arisen from the diseases of which 

 they died. The occurrence of two cases in the same dissecting- 

 room within so short a period of each other, and the recollection of 

 similar appearances being not unfrequently present in other bodies 

 dissected there, combined with an account published in the Medical 

 Gazette for February 2, 1833, of very small Cysticerci occurring in 

 the muscles of a subject at Guy's Hospital, which cannot but be con- 

 sidered referrible to the same cause, render it highly probable that a 

 sufficient number of observations will soon occur to elucidate this 

 curious disease. In two of the cases the emaciation was accompa- 

 nied by external, and in the third by internal, ulceration ; but no 

 connexion was traced between the worm and any of the symptoms 

 of the disease. 



In a portion of muscle placed, after it had reached a state of inci- 

 pient putrescence, in spirit of wine for three days, the worms, when 

 pressed out from their cysts, exhibited languid, but sufficiently evi- 

 dent motions, consisting in the tightening and relaxation of their 

 coils : and more languid motions were afterwards noticed in some 

 specimens that were examined a fortnight after the death of the sub- 

 ject from which they were obtained. 



