INTESTINAL WORMS. 351 



ing througli tlie flank. He did so ; and, introducing his hand, 

 found what he expected — hardened feces collected; which 

 he squeezed and broke in pieces. The operation was followed 

 by abundant discharges of dung. But relief had arrived too 

 late : the animal already had sunk to a state of depression 

 past recovery. 



INTESTINAL WORMS. 



Out of the many kinds of worms inhabiting various parts 

 of the bodies of different animals/ we in general reckon four 

 — though some writers mention a fifth — as claiming for their 

 abode the intestines of the horse. Another description, named 

 by Professor Joly, the hypoderma equi, inhabits the skin. 

 For an account of it see ' The Veterinarian' for December, 

 1850, vol. xxiii, p. 607. This account is carried to 

 " Diseases of the Skin,'' vol. i, of this work. That one 

 animal should be destined to spend its life within the body 

 of another, and be so completely dependent for its existence 

 upon the one affording it a nidus that it can neither 

 live out of its body nor survive its death, is one of those 

 phenomena appearing to us like a freak of Nature, at the 

 same time that, in a philosophical point of view, it turns 

 out, on examination, quite beyond our comprehension. A 

 fact even, perhaps, still more curious than this is, that the 

 same variety of worm which inhabits the body of one species 

 of animal will not live — at least, so we have a right to 

 suppose from its never being found — within the body of an 

 animal of another and different class : as with lice and fleas, 

 so it seems to be with worms; each kind having not only its 

 appropriate part of the body as its nidus, but likewise its 

 particular species of animal to infest. 



Origin. — Hurtrel d'Arboval has been at the pains to review 

 some out of the divers hypotheses which have been framed 



' Those found in the skin, in the eye, and other parts, shall be noticed in the 

 disease of such structures. In an operation for castration, Mr. Cooper, V.S., 

 Berkhampstead, discovered on laying open the cavity of the tunica vaginalis 

 several worms floating about in the aqueous secretion contained therein. 



