TRICHINOSIS. 



stricture of the intestine remain after dysentery, it is to be treated as 

 previously described. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



TRICHINA DISEASE TRICHINOSIS. 



THERE may be some doubt in what division of special pathology 

 trichina disease should be considered ; whether it should be treated 

 of among the diseases of the stomach, as the first seat of the disease 

 is there, or among the diseases of the organs of motion, as the trichinae 

 pass from the intestinal canal into the muscles ; or among the infec- 

 tious diseases. In the present edition I have decided to treat of tri- 

 chinosis among the infectious diseases, as I here uphold the depend- 

 ence of the infectious diseases on the presence of a lower organism, 

 more strongly than I did in former editions. The origin of trichinosis 

 from a contagium vivum is proved. The symptoms have the greatest 

 resemblance to those of the infectious diseases. Even the period of 

 incubation is common to both. We may go still further and say that 

 there is far less doubt about trichinosis being an infectious disease 

 than about any other disease belonging to this class. 



ETIOLOGY. For more than twenty years numerous punctate, white 

 bodies had occasionally been seen in the muscles, on autopsy, which 

 the microscope showed were small cysts containing a thread-like worm, 

 wound up spirally. This worm, the trichina spiralis, showed no sexual 

 organs, and it was altogether obscure whence it came, how it reached 

 the muscles, and whether it was capable of further development. We 

 have already shown that the supposition, according to which the muscu- 

 lar trichina was the undeveloped state of the tricocephalus dispar, was 

 soon found to be erroneous. From experiments, by Virchow, Leuck- 

 art, and others, of feeding animals with flesh containing trichinae, it 

 was shown that the muscular trichinae become free in the stomach and 

 intestines of the animals fed, during the digestion of the meat ; in a 

 f 3w days they attain the length of three or four millimeters, and form 

 male and female perfect animals, intestinal trichinae. In the female, 

 which is far more numerous and about two-thirds larger than the male, 

 innumerable eggs develop, and from these young ones escape, living, 

 from the body of the mother, even in from five to eight days, atod move 

 freely in the intestines. The young brood of the intestinal trichinae 

 now soon perforate the wall of the intestine, part of them passing into 

 the abdominal cavity, part between the folds of the mesentery to the 

 spinal column, thence to the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and fol- 

 lowing the intermuscular connective tissue to the other muscles of the 

 body. The number of these wandering trichinae is innumerable. They 



