2G 



as it now stands, is so constituted that an animal may be referred to 

 it \vithout much real or available knowledge of its organization being 

 thereby afForded : it embraces animals with the molecular, and others 

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

 accomi)anied by different types of the digestive system, and -vvhich in- 

 dicate not merely diflferences 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 Polygastric In- 

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

 and of which Ehrenberg has composed bis genera Vibrio, Spirillum, 

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

 as an example frora the lo\vest class of the animal kingdom having its 

 habitat in the interior of living animal bodies. Referring it, ho\vever, 

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

 order, its generic character may be thus given : 



Teichina. 

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

 ano discreto nulio, tubo intestinali genitalibusąue inconspicuis. (In vesicž 

 extema. cellulosa, elastica, plerumąue solitarium.) 



Trichina spiralis. Trich. minutissima, spiraliter, rarb fleiuose, 

 incurvū; capite obtuso, colio nulio, caudd attenuatdobtusd. (Vesicd 

 externd ellipticd, estremitatibus plerumąue attenuatis elongatis.) 

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

 difFusa, creberrima. 



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

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

 secting-room of Saint Bartholome\v'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 t\vo cases in the šame dissecting- 

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

 similar appearances being not unfreąuently present in other bodies 

 dissected there, combined \vith an account published in the Medical 

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

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

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

 sufficient number of observations will soon occur to elucidate this 

 curious disease. In t\vo of the cases the emaciation was accompa- 

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

 connexion was traced between the M'orm and any of the symptoms 

 of the disease. 



In a portion of musele placed, after it had reached a statė of inci- 

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

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



