366 PAEASITIC DISEASE OF LUNGS. 



In calves similar parasites abound under certain circum- 

 stances in the respiratory organs. The strongylus vitulorum 

 (Reed), or Sir. micrurus (Mehlis),is one of the armed strongyli 

 with a filiform body, short caudal, long in the male, and 

 mouth with three papillae. This species is met with in the 

 air passages of calves, and occasionally in the ass. Nicholls, 

 in the first volume of the Philosophical Transactions, mentions 

 the husk, common amongst calves under one year old, as 

 dependent on worms in the windpipe; and in 1788, when 

 Camper was engaged in investigating the cattle plague, and 

 especially the advantages of inoculation as a preventive, he 

 learned that one of his neighbours who had saved 50 calves 

 by inoculation, lost 30 by this parasitic affection. On the 

 2nd of September of the same year, Camper had occasion to 

 examine the trachea and lung of a calf that had died, as he 

 expresses himself, with myriads of these worms in the air 

 passages. On another calf Camper noticed a perfect ball of 

 these worms effectually obstructing the windpipe. He de- 

 scribed the worms well, and observed that they were vivi- 

 parous. In his literary researches on the subject he found 

 that Gesner had called a worm Wasserkalb, calf of water, of 

 which he knew not the origin, but that calves swallowed 

 them with the water to the great peril of their lives magno 

 etiam vitce periculo. 



In the pig a similar affection has been observed, and the 

 worm has been described best by Mehlis and Gurlt. It has 

 been called strongylus paradoxus (Mehlis) ; gordius pulmo- 

 naliapri (Ebel); ascarisfiliformis cauda rotundata (Goeze); 

 asc. bronchiorum suis (Modser) ; and strongylus suis by 

 Budolphi, who looked on it as a doubtful species, having 

 seen but two specimens which he had received from Bremser, 

 and which had been found in the air passages of the domestic 

 pig. Gurlt speaks of them as infesting the wild boar and 



