VOL. XVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. '447 



sion, it may be supplied for the nourisiiment of tlie whole body of the worm again ; 

 for I am apt to believe this bladder is only the stomach of the worm, which will 

 appear less unreasonable if we consider in some insects how prodigiously large 

 the stomach is, in proportion to the other parts of the body ; in a leech you may 

 observe not a single, but above 20 stomachs, emptying out of one into another, 

 and running the whole length of the body. And what Malpighi* observes of 

 the silk worm, that it would devour in one day as much as was the weight of its 

 whole body, a leech will do far more at a meal. 



Perhaps some may be more inclined to think, that the whole is but an egg or 

 embryo of another insect forming, and that this bladder is as it were the am- 

 nion, and the outward coat that includes it, the chorion ; and could they per- 

 fect any such discovery, I should think, so too. But formerly in dissecting a 

 rotten sheep, wherein I found many of these hydatides, and opening several of 

 them, I could observe only the same structure exactly in all ; and doubtless had 

 it been otherwise, in so many, I could not but have met with some nearer to 

 perfection. 



These hydatides therefore I cannot but think are a sort of worms or insects 

 sui generis ; and because they contain so much water in them, and are usually 

 to be met with in rotten sheep, which are hydropical, I call them lumbrici hy- 

 dropic! ; not that I think all those cysts to be met with in morbid bodies are 

 such ; for in some I have not observed this neck and structure of parts, but only 

 a transparent bladder filled with a lympha, and those I take to be of another 

 kind. 



Thus, in a patient still living, and enjoying her health better than all her life 

 time before; about 10 years ago I caused her right side to be opened a little 

 below her short ribs, whence issued out abundance of limpid water ; but what 

 was most surprising, together with it. a great many hydatides ; that first and 

 last, as we guessed, there might come out about 500 of these bladders ; most 

 were entire and filled with limpid water ; of others that were too large for the 

 orifice, the films were broken, but in none of them could I observe the neck, 

 though I was inquisitive to find it ; which makes me think them to be different 

 from our present subject ; as are also those I have frequently met with in the 

 ovaria, or testicles, of women who have died hydropical, which I take to be 

 only the eggs contained there, which, by an extravagant flux of humours into 

 them, are often swelled, to that prodigious size, that I have taken sometimes 

 several gallons of liquor out of them. And what is mentioned (Philosophical 

 Transactions, N" 188,) of those bladders of water found in the urine bladder, 



* De Bombyce, p. 40. — Orig. 



