368 PAEASITIC DISEASE OF LUNGS. 



some sleeps' lungs lie had purchased on the butcher's stall. 

 Many strongyli existed in the bronchia, and grey nodules or 

 tubercles on the surface of the lungs. These nodules 

 Ercolani found to contain small worms and eggs, in which 

 the young strongyli were in a state of development, already 

 alive and active. Since then Ercolani has made some inter- 

 esting observations on the tenacity of life of the young 

 strongyli. These parasites show signs of life on being 

 moistened after drying for thirty days, and at other times 

 after having been immersed in spirits of wine at 30 , or in a 

 solution of alum and corrosive sublimate. Ercolani, more- 

 over, says that the ova, abundant in the mucus of the bron- 

 chial tubes, containing worms, sink into the air vesicles, 

 become coated by an albuminous material, and thus are 

 imbedded in the lung tissue. This would lead us to believe 

 that when worms are swallowed by healthy sheep they im- 

 mediately find their way into the windpipe. I must confess 

 I doubt this. Of course the eggs of the worms developed in 

 the lungs are deposited in the lungs again, or may move in- 

 directly into the system of another animal, but the migration 

 from the mouth or alimentary canal to the lungs, certainly 

 requires a more complete explanation than has hitherto been 

 given. The number of embryo worms met with in the lungs 

 of one sheep is sufficient to infect a whole flock, so that the 

 disease has manifested itself as enzootic or epizootic. 



Perhaps as early as La Harpe and Ercolani, did Dr C. 

 Eadcliff Hall, of Torquay, investigate the question. In 1856, 

 in the British and Foreign Medico- Chirurgical Review, Dr 

 Hall says, " For fifteen years past I have been in the habit 

 of noticing the lungs in butchers' shops and slaughter-houses. 

 I have never seen a single specimen of the lung of a full- 

 grown sheep that was entirely free from entozoic disease. 

 The disease is not hereditary, since the lungs in young lambs 



