410 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



stated. Some have written without having any knowledge of the 

 factt as known to accurate oljservers. Trichinae are neither 

 ajiinialculaj or infusorice, but arc very minute w^orms. They are 

 not in water or in the air, l)ut are found in the flesh of swine, par- 

 ticukirly in the lean part. The female or mother trichinas while 

 in the intestine are released from the envelope or capsule in the 

 pork or ham, and give birth to broods of young trichinfe. It is 

 these young, not their parents, which work their way through the 

 side of the intestine and thence into the tissues, particularly the 

 muocles. This animalculii3S never do. The trichinte do not cause 

 fatal sickness by eating their way, nor do they exist by devouring 

 the tissue. 



Trichinffi have killed many persons in various localities in Ger- 

 many. Groups of cases occurring at one period are called epi. 

 demies, caused by the common practice of eating raw ham, by 

 eating minced pork, as sausages, and as these forms of meat are 

 cheap we see the cause Avhy the disease is more common here 

 than elsewhere. The skepticism arising from the fact that com- 

 paratively few persons wdio cat pork die of this disease is, to say 

 the least, stupid. 



Only a small percentage of swine are infected with trichina? 

 even w^here epidemics have occurred, nor do all persons infected 

 die. Some parts of a swine's flesh are more likely to be infected 

 than other parts. Of those who eat the same pork, some die, 

 others are only sick. In a cure, a great part of the trichinae, if 

 not all, become stationary, and then are inclosed in a little spindle- 

 shaped cell, or capsule, of lime. The pig is the only animal Avhich 

 men eat that is thus infected. There have been cases where 

 butchers have denied that the meat they sold contained trichinae; 

 to prove it, they eat the meat and died. 



Thirty-two years ago this capsule, not the released worm, was 

 observed by several anatomists. It is simikar to the rain worm, 

 and it is the only worm infesting the body which causes death. 

 In 1815 a person had this disease and recovered. In 1863 he had 

 a tumor on the neck, and on removing it the shells of the trichina 

 were discovered. 



A trichina? mother has a hundred of living young in her body: 

 after bearing them she still continues to breed more. If one con- 

 tains 200 young, and there are 70,000 of these mothers, w^e may 

 judge of their numbers, for so many may be contained in a few 

 morsels of meat. It is the young alone which spread through the 



