1882.] PROF. OWEN ON TRICHINA SPIRALIS. 573 



Thus it is plain that, of the two accomplished officers of the great 

 Hospital and IMedical School of Guy's, the Prosector or Anatomical 

 Demonstrator came to the conclusion that the corpuscles in question 

 were a minute species of Hydatid or Cxjsticerais ; and the Physician 

 inclined to the belief that they were ova of a new species of Dip- 

 terous insect ; but Dr. Addison candidly owns " an unwillingness 

 to draw an absolute inference from his experiment." The contents 

 of the cyst were neither seen nor suspected by either observer. 



Such was the state of knowledge when, early in February 1835, 

 I received from Mr. Wormald, Demonstrator of Anatomy at St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital, in which Medical School I then held the 

 office of ' Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology,' por- 

 tions of the muscular tissue of a subject to which his attention had 

 been called on account of a gritty sensation perceived in dissection, 

 and which, from the rapid blunting of the scalpels employed, he 

 considered to be caused by deposition of specks of earthy matter. 



This was the sole indication which reached me when I made 

 the microscopical investigation, resulting in the discovery of the 

 worm, as detailed in my ' Memoir' communicated to the Zoological 

 Society of London, February 24th, 183.5. 



Li the course of the investigation I inferred that the cysts con- 

 taining the worm defined as " Trichina spiralis^' were the corpuscles 

 previously described by Hilton as " Cystieerci,'' At p. 321 of my 

 ' Memoir ' I give the facts and inferences which led me to reject 

 the conclusion that the cyst was a kind of Hydatid or Cysticercus, 

 and state " that the ' cyst ' is adventitious, foreign to the Entozoon, 

 and composed of the cellular substance of the muscles infested, 

 morbidly altered by the irritation of the worm"'. 



At the time of tiiis discovery I was unaware of the fact, sub- 

 sequently noticed in my paper, that Mr. (now Sir James) Paget had 

 taken portions of the affected muscles to the British Museum, where 

 they were microscopically examined in the Botanical Department, 

 and the wormlet in the cyst clearly seen. 



Subsequently to the pubhcation of ' Watson's Lectures,' which 

 gave rise to other expressions of opinion besides Littre's, it was 

 announced that both Hilton's and my observations had been antici- 

 pated by an eminent Professor of Physiology of Heidelberg. In the 

 issue of the 'Times' newspaper of February 10th, 1866, insertion is 

 given to the following ' Note' from "T. S. Cobbold, M.D., F.R.S., 

 of No. 84 "Wimpole Street:" — " Sir, If Mr. .Tabez Hogg is in error 

 respecting the discovery of Trichina, so also is the Curator of Guy's 

 Museum. The 'little bodies' were first noticed by Tiedemanu, in 

 the year 1822, thus anticipating Mr. Peacock by six years.'' 



No reference to the work or publication containing the record oi 

 Tiedemann's alleged discovery was given ; and the only account which 

 could have suggested or served as a basis of the letter to ' The 

 Times,' I found in the following German periodical — Froriep's 

 'Notizen,' Band i. S. 64 (1821). It appears as a record of a patho- 

 logical appearance observed by the eminent Professor of Physiology 

 1 Zool. Trans, loc. cit. p. 322. 



