27 



and difficult ; there are many steps, and it has been the work of 

 many hands. How the task has been aocomphshed I propose to 

 relate to-night. 



To corainence, we must go back more than half-a-century to the 

 year 1822. Before that time nothing whatever was known of the 

 subject. In that year Tiedemann, while making a post-mortem 

 examination of the body of a gouty old toper, observed what he 

 describes as certain stony concretions, lying in the cellular tissue 

 between the muscles ; they were from two to four lines long and 

 ronndish. A chemical examination showed them to consist largely 

 of Phosphate of Lime. The weight of opinion now is, that these 

 were Trichinm Ca2)sides greatly altered by earthy deposit (they are 

 much larger). Tiedemann had no idea of their parasitic nature ; 

 he doubtless thought that he had come upon a ijathological curiosity, 

 and there was the end of it. Six years after, in 1828, when this 

 case had no doubt been forgotten, we find that Mr. Peacock 

 observed similar small bodies in the muscles. He preserved a 

 portion, but made out nothing fresh. This specimen, which is in 

 Ciuy's Museum, is, according to Dr. Cobbold, the oldest piece of 

 Trichinous flesh in existence. 



Five years more elapse before we have anything fresh to 

 record. During the year 1833, Mr. Hilton, then Demonstrator of 

 Anatomy, at Guy's, came again upon these bodies and made some 

 investigation into their nature, the results of which he embodied in 

 a paper read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society, towards the 

 close of the year. He relates that a man named Proctor, aged 70, 

 sufiering from Cancer, was admitted into Guy's, that he died in a 

 short time, and five days after, his body was submitted to dis- 

 section. He says his attention Mas arrested by a mottled appearance 

 of the muscles. They were pale, and nut so distinctly fibrous as 

 usual, and between the fibres there were situated oval bodies, trans- 

 parent in the middle and opaque at either end. He examined 

 them with the microscope without finding any organization, pro- 

 bably owing to their calcification. He placed some under the skin 

 of a rabl)it, but as the animal died 72 hours afterwards, the results 

 were negative. He allowed other portions to decompose with the 

 same result. Dr. Addison put some portions of the flesh into a 

 glass vessel and covered it with paper perforated with pin-holes. 

 Some flies subsequently appeared, but he refused to attach any 

 importance to ihis circumstance. Hilton came to the conclusion 



