628 VARIOUS FORMS OF ECHINOCOCCUS. 



the bladders, both large and small, were provided with heads, so that 

 in single preparations one could count more than thirty. The smallest 

 bladders usually contained only one head, which almost filled the 

 whole interior; but others contained several, which were sometimes 

 of normal structure, and at other times had lost their hooks and 

 become calcified. Besides the heads, there were in the alveoli lami- 

 nated calcareous corpuscles and red haematoidin crystals, and occa- 

 sionally also accumulations of yellowish-brown bile-pigment. That 

 the heads are contained in brood- capsules is asserted only by Morin. 1 

 We have already mentioned that the bladders, both large and 

 small, have but rarely a regular spherical shape. Not only does the 

 wall of the latter often appear to be indented and folded, but one not 

 unfrequeutly finds bladders which are more or less deeply constricted 

 in the middle, while others have lateral protrusions of varying number 

 and size, which occasionally project outwards almost like a berry 

 (Fig. 334). 



As Kuhn has already stated, similar racemose forms are found 

 in the common Echinococcus of cattle, 2 except that in this case the 

 protrusions are larger, and attain an average size 

 of 1 cm. I have inserted a drawing of this race- 

 mose Echinococcus, but unfortunately I am unable 

 to state its origin. The protrusions together en- 

 closed a single undivided hollow space, although 

 the communication was in many cases effected 

 FIG. 334. Echino- only by means of a narrow canal. I am not 

 coccus racemosus (nat ce rtain, indeed, whether there were not also some 

 isolated bladders in the neighbourhood of the worm. 

 If we think of this Echinococcus racemosus as enclosed in a common 

 thick stroma, in which the individual protrusions have each their own 

 alveolus, it is seen that the only difference between it and E. multi- 

 locularis is in regard to the size of the separate parts. 



I think this resemblance justifies us in concluding that the 

 Echinococcus multilocularis, like Cysticercus racemosus (p. 554), originates 

 from primarily simple bladder-worms, and not, as was sometimes 

 supposed, from a large number of isolated Echinococci. 



It is still, however, a moot-point whether the individual bladders 

 of Echinococcus multilocularis are always and exclusively formed by 

 inflated protrusions of the wall. As Virchow had before observed, I 

 have often seen upon the surface of the bladders tuft -like and club- 



1 He says that only some of the heads were found in the brood-capsules, the majority 

 being situated directly on the parenchyma layer (loc. cit., p. 31). 



3 See, for example, the case of Megnin above mentioned (p. 614). Krabbe also asserts 

 that in the liver of the sheep he has often found the Echinococcus-bladder " often somewhat 

 branched" Archivf. Naturgesch., Jahrg. xxxiv., Bd. i., p. 120, 1865. 



