10 THE DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



(in fact, I never saw among all my examinations a piece of pork so 

 completely filled with these pests ; capsules with four trichinae in 

 them were by no means seldom) : '05 (5 centigrammes) contained 

 at least 50 trichinag. One gramme would therefore contain 1,000, 

 and 4 grammes, or a drachm, 4,000, and a pound of such pork 

 would contain at least 400,000, and, if we assume the muscles of a 

 hog to weigh 100 pounds, its organism — were equal dispersion pos- 

 sible—would contain 40,000,000. 



The immense multitude of these parasites which may be found 

 infecting a sing-le oro^anism is still more wonderful than their wide 



O C5 O 



dispersion over the autosite. 



Leuckart estimates that, in some of the cases which have come 

 under his observation, a single gramme of flesh lodged from twelve 

 to fifteen hundred ; and assuming the muscles of a man to weigh 

 forty j)ounds, the number of these parasites infecting a human or- 

 ganism at such a ratio would sum up some thirty millions. 



In Zenker's case — to be especially noticed later — Fiedler calcu- 

 lated that the woman must have lodged some ninety-four millions ; 

 and Cobbold assumes that one hundred millions of the encapsulated 

 parasites may sometimes infect one organism at the same time. 



Leuckart again says that no one would look upon the foregoing 

 as exaggerated estimates who, like himself, had found some sixty 

 trichinse in ten milligrammes of muscle. 



In a report of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, it was esti- 

 mated that one cubic inch of pork, examined under its auspices, 

 contained some ten thousand, and that a person consuming the 

 ordinary amount of such fiesh, taken at a single meal, would intro- 

 duce into his organism more than one million trichinae. 



Kauch found numerous trichinae infecting the muscles of a hog. 

 Of three hundred microscopic specimens, they failed in but tliree. 

 In some he found thirty in one focus ; in others, but five or six ex- 

 amples. As in seventy specimens weighing one gramme three hun- 

 dred and fifty trichinae were found, one pound would contain one 

 hundred and seventy-five thousand ; and one hundred pounds, sev- 

 enteen million five hundred thousand. In many cases, however, 

 the parasites are much less frequently met with ; and one has to 

 search through many microscopic specimens before meeting with 

 any, and then only with isolated examples. 



"When sufficient time has elapsed from the invasion of the mus- 

 cles and formation of the capsules, the same may be recognized 

 microscopically as small, white specks. Such muscles appear as if 

 sprinkled with grains of white salt or sand. The calcification of 



