318 Miscellaneous. 



dead, their head being retracted, and they exhibited no signs of move- 

 ment. After having washed them well in warm water, I introduced 

 them into the subcutaneous cellular tissue of the thigh of a kitten ; 

 eight days afterwards the wound had cicatrized. I next took some 

 Echinococci which had been immersed in gastric juice diluted with half 

 the quantity of milk or water, and inoculated a young dog by an inci- 

 sion in the abdomen reaching to the peritonaeum, but without open- 

 ing the latter, upon which I placed two of the parasites ; the wound 

 was accurately closed by suture, and at the end of three weeks I 

 found a cellular and highly vascular cavity, containing a yellowish 

 serosity, in which were two Echinococci, i-emarkably modified in form. 

 They were transformed into vesicles, covered ujion their external 

 surface with a number of gemmules and isolated cells supj^orted by 

 pedicles. Examined under the microscope, these cells, upon being 

 crushed, gave exit to a multitude of other small cells, similar to those 

 found in the body of the Acephalocysts, and which rejiresented the 

 ovules. The hydatids being open exhibited upon their internal surface 

 a still greater number of gemmules, pediculated cells, and other cells 

 floating freely in the liquid." 



The author particularly recommends this mode of experimenting, 

 as by placing the vesicles between the peritonaeum and abdominal 

 parietes they can be disclosed for examination at different intervals, 

 and their different stages of development followed out, without the 

 necessity of killing the animal. 



External injuries seem to favour the development of hydatids. 



" I injected a fluid charged with ovules of the Echinococcus into 

 the crural vein of two puppies, two old cats, and a guinea-pig. 

 Eight days afterwards I made an incision in the tongue of one of the 

 dogs, and the abdominal muscles of the other ; one of the cats re- 

 ceived a blow upon the liver and vomited ; the second was slightly 

 pinched with an instrument behind the left eye-ball ; the skin of the 

 guinea-pig's thigh was compressed so as to produce ecchymosis. The 

 five animals were examined three weeks afterwards. In the guinea- 

 pig five well-marked Acephalocysts were found in the cellular tissue 

 beneath the part that had been pinched. The liver of the cat pre- 

 sented a sac full of Acephalocysts. The three other animals offered 

 no results." 



It is sufficient in experimenting with the Ccenuri (so often found in 

 sheep affected with vertigo) to take a cephalic segment and introduce 

 it by trepan into the brain of a dog, or inject it into the circulatory 

 current, and at the end of ten or twenty days a perfect vesicle is 

 found filled with young embryos of the parasite. If these are in- 

 closed in a bottle and moistened occasionally with water enough to 

 prevent their drying, they decompose at the end of four or five 

 days and are converted into a fluid, which, with a little serum added, 

 answers also for the purposes of inoculation. The Cysticercus is the 

 most easily transmitted by inoculation. Entire specimens may be 

 used, or the gemmules formed upon the interior aiad exterior of their 

 membrane ; they are found in all parts of the bod}'', in the blood, the 

 respiratory passages, and the internal surface of the alimentary canal. 

 Boiling water destroys the Cysticerci, but not their ova ; immersion 



