VOL. XIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 601 



even so much that I cannot see how it can be avoided, but that the chyle must 

 slip into them, and so spoil them for being lungs. 



Upon the whole, what I have here offered I think is sufficient to render my 

 conjecture probable. And yet I have more reason to add why these orifices 

 should be mouths, because the joints when broken off yet still do live, and that 

 too as may be thought for some considerable time, which they could not unless 

 they had mouths in each, which might receive the aliment for the support of 

 it. Which brings me to the last particular I proposed for discriminating this 

 worm from all others out of the body. But since it has been so stiffly main- 

 tained by authors of great note, both modem as well as ancient, that the 

 worm itself scarcely lives, but is only a spolium of the intestine, or at least 

 that it is not one but many worms included in that membrane; I shall consider 

 how unlikely all such opinions are, and wide of the truth, and then deliver my 

 own observations concerning it. 



Hippocrates, or whoever was the author of that book, amongst his works, 

 tells us that this worm is oxoiov Ttp Ivri^a ^va-fAot, Xjuxov, quasi album ramentum in- 

 testinorum. And Aetius, and Paul us ^gineta are express that it is only the 

 inward coat of the intestine turned, and changed into the figure of an animal, 

 and many more are of the same opinion not worth mentioning, it seeming so 

 absurd, as Mercurialis observes. He rather thinks it to be the mucus, which 

 lines the inside of the intestines, and defends them from any asperities of the 

 feeces. And abundance there are of this opinion. But Franciscus Valleriola 

 seems the most of any to play the philosopher, and labours to show how this 

 pituita of the guts may be formed into a membrane, and then endeavours to 

 explain how these incisures or jointings of the body might happen likewise. 

 Felix Platerus is very positive that they are no animals at all. But those many 

 physicians who have observed them to move, and therefore to be animals and 

 alive easily confute him; and Gabucinus mentions one voided by a child 2 

 years and 4 months old ; that being put into water lived almost a day. And a 

 remarkable instance I had which I met with on the dissection of a dog in the 

 theatre of our college, where several of the members were present. I shall 

 therefore mention what I particularly observed of it, and how it moved itself, 

 which was very pleasing, and in different forms. For though all was per- 

 formed by contracting and shortening the joints, yet sometimes it rendered the 

 body that was flat round, and a cylinder; other times it made a deep hollow 

 or concave on one side, and a convex on the other: but most times there was 

 a bellying out at the edges, about the middle of the joints; and though that 

 part towards the head was very slender, yet upon contraction it would become as 

 broad as the last joints. This contraction of the joints I sometimes observed 

 at several places at the same time, at some distance from each other, which 



VOL. n. 4H 



