145 



XXXI. OBSERVATIONS ON PARASITICAL GROWTHS ON LIVING 



ANIMALS. 



By George Busk, Esq., Surgeon to the Hospital Ship, 

 Dreadnought, #c. 



THE occurrence of parasitical growths, or of organized productions, 

 having a close analogy with some forms of cryptogamic vegetation, 

 upon the surfaces or within the substance of living animals, and in 

 many instances constituting the cause of disease, is a subject of con- 

 siderable importance in pathology ; and although it would be out of 

 place in these pages to enter into the pathological relations of these 

 affections, yet as the microscope has been the means by which the few 

 facts as yet ascertained in this matter have been brought to light, it 

 may not, perhaps, be deemed irrelevant to the object of the MICRO- 

 SCOPIC JOURNAL, to admit a short statement of what has been observed, 

 and thus to bring into one point of view, and attract the attention of 

 microscopists, to a probably not unfertile field of investigation. 



1. On the 28th of August, 1832, Mr. Owen read some notes before 

 the Zoological Society on the anatomy of the Flamingo, (Phcenicopterus 

 ruberj, in the lungs of which bird he found numerous tubercles and 

 vomicse, the inner surface of which latter was covered with a greenish 

 vegetable mould or mucor. Mr. Owen presumed that the growths had 

 taken place during the life of the animal, and thence concluded that 

 internal parasites are not derived exclusively from the animal kingdom, 

 but that there are Entophyta as well as Entozoa* 



2. In the year 1835 a disease to which silkworms are subject, known 

 under the name of Muscardine, was first described byM.Bassi of Lodi, and 

 M. Balsamo, a botanist of Milan. They ascertained that this disease was 

 owing to the growth, on or within the body of the caterpillar, of a cryp- 

 togamic vegetation. M. Audouin, in 1836 and 1837, in a paper en- 

 titled " Anatomical and Physiological Researches on the contagious 

 disease which attacks silk-worms, and which is designated under the 

 name of Muscardine," 'f described a series of experiments on the chry- 

 salis of Bombyx Mori thus affected, and which he had received from 

 M. Bassi. He was able to follow in detail the transformation of the 



* Philosophical Magazine, 1833. New Series, Vol. II, Page 71. 

 f Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Vol. VIII, New Series, Page 229, PI. 10, 11. 



VOL. I. L 



