186 PARASITES OF MAN 



Sonsino having compared the facts supplied by these cases, was 

 satisfied that the nematodes in question were specifically identical 

 with those that I had previously obtained from my little African 

 patient. However, Dr Sonsino was of opinion that his Filarise 

 were not precisely the same as those that had been described 

 by Lewis. 



On the 8th of April, 1876, I received from Dr William 

 Roberts, of Manchester, some capillary tubes, charged with 

 blood, obtained from a patient suffering from chyluria. The 

 tubes had been transmitted by Dr Bancroft, of Brisbane, 

 Queensland, Australia ; and in fulfilment of the donor's request, 

 Dr Roberts afforded me an opportunity of examining their 

 contents, he having himself verified Bancroft's statement that 

 they contained Filariae. It was not until May 22nd that I 

 found opportunity to confirm the observations of Drs Bancroft 

 and Roberts. The contents of some of the tubes had by this 

 time completely dried up ; but in others, to which diluted 

 glycerine had been added, the blood appeared tolerably fresh. 

 In what might be reckoned as the sixth part of the contents of 

 one of the tubes, spread on a glass slide, I detected about 

 twenty Filariae, three of which I sketched in situ, in order to 

 compare them with the figures of Lewis, and also with others 

 that I had procured from my Bilharzia- patient in the year 1870. 

 There could not, I thought, be any doubt as to the identity of 

 all these sexually-immature nematoids. One novelty, however, 

 presented itself in the presence of a solitary and empty egg 

 envelope, measuring about ~ 5 of an inch in its long diameter, 

 and thus corresponding precisely with the ova that I obtained 

 from the urine in my Bilharzia case. 



According to Bancroft, chyluria is somewhat common in 

 Brisbane ; and the case here brought forward was not the only 

 one of the kind which had already furnished Filariae in the 

 blood. _ The patient was a little girl ten years of age. 



Thus stood the facts in the spring of 1876. Having 

 informed Dr Bancroft that a nematoid egg had been detected 

 in the Australian blood transmitted to England, he was induced 

 to make further investigations. These happily resulted in the 

 discovery of the adult worm; the circumstances attending the 

 " find" being recorded by Dr Bancroft in a letter written to 

 myself and dated from Brisbane, Queensland, April 20th, 1877. 

 He wrote as follows : " I have labored very hard to find the 

 parental form of the parasite, and am glad to tell you that I 



