104 ANIMAL PAEASITES. 



a medical man in recent times has castigated a fool of this kind, 

 who chattered about the presence of living frogs in the body of 

 a patient, in the same style in which Dr. S. C. H. Windier 

 (Schwindler) once derided the Infusorian theory of the process of 

 fermentation. But such remedies are not thoroughgoing, and 

 cannot effect a fundamental cure. For the cure of these follies 

 we are indebted to Berthold, of Gottingen (see ( Nachrichten 

 von der G. A. IJniversitat und der Kb'nigl. Gesellschaft der Wissen- 

 schaften zu Gottingen/ No. 13, 1849), and I here reproduce lite- 

 rally his conclusions. 



1. All observations on living amphibia having remained long 

 in the human body, and, acting as the cause of long illnesses in 

 it, are false. 



2. Eggs of amphibia when swallowed very soon lose their 

 power of development in the stomach. (Dr. Kretschmar, of 

 Stolpen, informed me as an analogous case, that trout often devour 

 fertilised trouts' eggs at the spawning time, but that these eggs 

 when again taken out of the stomachs of the trout and put unin- 

 jured into fresh water, do not become developed.) 



3. It is, however, possible that amphibia may get into the 

 human subject by intentional or accidental swallowing. 



4. Such animals may be again evacuated either in a living or 

 asphyxied state, when vomiting takes place soon after they are 

 swallowed. 



5. If this vomiting only takes place at a later period, the 

 animals thrown up are dead ; if no vomiting take place, the 

 animals are more or less digested, and we find either their epi- 

 dermis or bones, or nothing at all of them, in the faeces. 



6. The only and true reason why the amphibia cannot perma- 

 nently live in the human body is the moist heat of at least 

 80 F. (29 R.) which no species of amphibia (frogs of all kinds 

 and frogs' spawn, the tadpoles of frogs and toads, salamanders, 

 tritons and their spawn, lizards, and slow-worms were employed 

 in the experiments) can resist from two to four hours. 



The method of experiment was as follows : Berthold put the 

 animals just mentioned in vessels with water and air, which were 

 kept for two to four hours at the temperature of the stomach 

 (29 R.) 



The ordinary caterpillars also belong here; they soon died 

 even at a low temperature in water. They can get into the stomach 

 with salad, or in as far as concerns the smooth sixteen-footed cater- 



