THE PATHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICAIfCE 



OF 



NEMATODE HtEMATOZOA- 



BY 



T. E. LEWIS, M.B. 



Some interest having been taken in a report which I had the honour of submitting to 

 the Government, in 1872, on the existence of innumerable immature nematode Entozoa 

 in the blood of persons labouring under certain diseases, I trust that the following addi- 

 tional contribution towards the extension of our knowledge in the same direction will 

 not be unacceptable. A few of the clinical observations made since the issue of that 

 report have been incorporated in the reprint of it which appeared in the Indian 

 Annals of Medical Science;] others have been made subsequent to these and have not 

 appeared in any journal, and the announcement that the blood of pariah dogs is, not 

 infrequently, somewhat similarly affected will, I believe, as regards India, be quite new ; 

 as will also the description of the pathological conditions frequently co-existing with this 

 state in these animals — a pathological condition which I have not yet been able to find 

 recorded with regard to the dogs of India or of any other country. 



It will, perhaps, be as well to recapitulate in a few words the leading facts referred 

 to in the report in its original form, so that readers of this paper who may not have 

 seen the former will be the better able to form an estimate of the bearing of the 

 observations now recorded on the facts and inferences then adduced. 



These were to the effect that the blood of persons suffering from the diseased 

 condition known as Chyluria contained minute nematode worms (evidently the embryos 

 of some hitherto undetected nematode, provisionally named, for the sake of convenient 

 reference, Filaria sanguinis hominis), averaging y-th of an inch in length and having 

 a transverse diameter of about ^rffoth of an inch ; not differing materially from the young 

 of many other nematodes, except by the fact of their being enclosed in delicate, trans- 

 lucent sheaths, within which they can be observed to elongate and contract themselves 

 so as to be able, within the space of a moment, either to occupy the entire length of 

 the enveloping tube, or only one-half of it or even less than that : That I had obtained 



* Forming an Appendix to the Tenth Annual Report of the Sanitary Commissioner with the GovernmeHt 

 of India, 1874. 



t No. XXXII, January 1874, pp. 604 to 649, and reproduced in present Memorial Volume, pp. 503 — 632. 



