128 PARASITES OP MAN 



As a student of parasites for some thirty years, I must 

 without offence be permitted to protest against the too 

 frequent omission of parasites in statistical evidence as a 

 cause of mortality. From facts within my own knowledge I 

 can confidently assert that parasites in general, and hydatids in 

 particular, play a far more important part in the production of 

 disease and death than is commonly supposed. In saying thus 

 much, however, I am not insensible to the fact that, in recent 

 times, new methods of treatment combined with higher surgical 

 skill, have greatly tended to lessen the fatality of this affection. 

 In this connection I would especially refer to the recorded 

 experiences of an able colonial surgeon, Dr MacGillivray, as 

 made known in the pages of the ' Australian Medical Journal/ 

 The able surgeon to the Bendigo Hospital, treated as in-patients, 

 from 1862 to 1872, inclusive, no fewer than seventy-four cases 

 of hydatid disease. He operated on fifty-eight of them. Two 

 patients were tapped for temporary relief (as they were dying 

 of other diseases); and of the remaining fifty-six only eleven 

 died. No fewer than forty-five were discharged cured a fact 

 redounding largely, I should think, to the credit of Australian 

 surgery. 



In reference to museum evidence I have no hesitation in 

 saying that the pathological collections in the metropolis 

 abound in rare and remarkable illustrations of hydatid disease ; 

 most of the preparations being practically known only to such 

 few members of the medical profession as have been at some 

 time or other officially connected with the museums. Not 

 without justice, curators often complain that their work and 

 catalogues are turned to little account. As a former conservator 

 of the Edinburgh University Anatomical Museum (1851-56), and 

 subsequently as museum-curator at the Middlesex Hospital 

 Medical College, I am in a position to sympathise with them. 

 Valuable, however, as the catalogues are, it is often necessary 

 to make a close inspection of the preparations in order to arrive 

 at a correct interpretation of the facts presented. 



Although the entozoal preparations in the museum attached 

 to St Bartholomew's Hospital are, comparatively speaking, 

 few in number, there are some choice specimens of hydatid 

 disease. There is a remarkable case in which hydatids invaded 

 the right half of the bones of the pelvis ; death resulting from 

 suppurative inflammation of the cysts. This patient, a woman, 

 had also another hydatid cyst which was connected with the 



