CESTODA 137 



Norwich Hospital displays a choice series of hydatids, chiefly 

 from the collection of the late Mr Crosse. That eminent 

 surgeon prepared a special set of specimens to illustrate the 

 process of natural cure by calcareous degeneration ; and I may 

 here, perhaps, be pardoned for mentioning that it was the study 

 of these and other entozoa in Mr Crossed Collection, some 

 thirty or more years ago, that first drew my attention to the 

 phenomena of parasitic life. Illustrations of the helminths in 

 question are still in my possession. In one case (which is 

 instructive as indicating the possibility of death from the 

 simplest form and commonest habitat of an hydatid) a lad, 

 twelve years old, received a slight blow from a playmate. Some- 

 thing gave way, and death speedily followed. It was found by 

 post-mortem examination that a solitary liver hydatid, rather 

 larger than a cricket-ball, had been ruptured. Although the 

 case is almost unique, it is nevertheless by no means pleasant 

 to reflect upon the fact that under similar circumstances a slight 

 blow might prove fatal to any one, no matter in what internal 

 organ the bladder worm happened to be situated. 



Before concluding my summary notice of the human 

 hydatids contained in the metropolitan and certain other 

 museums, there is an interesting literary contribution that I 

 cannot pass unnoticed. In the November number of the 

 ' Indian Medical Gazette' for 1870 an article occurs in which it 

 is stated that the Calcutta Medical College Museum contains 

 eighteen specimens of hydatid cysts of liver. This fact was, it 

 seems, originally adduced to show, not the frequency, but rather 

 the rarity, of the occurrence of hydatids in India. However, 

 from a valuable communication by Dr James Cleghorn, which 

 was published in the same periodical for the following March, it 

 appears that hydatids of the liver are much more common in 

 India than is generally supposed. This, he says, is owing to 

 the circumstance that many of the so-called cases of tropical 

 abscess are neither more nor less than examples of hydatid cysts 

 that have suppurated. Besides Cleghorn's evidence, we have 

 the previous testimony of the Inspector General I. M. D., 

 whose Keport for 1868-69 I have already referred to in con- 

 nection with Cysticercus in beef. He says : " During some 

 three months' regular observation of the animals killed at the 

 Commissariat slaughter-house here, at least 70 per cent, of the 

 beef livers may be calculated as thus affected. Cobbold, 

 writing of the Taenia echinococcus, says that ' this little tapeworm 



