1882.] PROF. OWEN ON TRICHINA SPIRALIS. 575 



Herbst gave to dogs portions of the trichinosed flesh of a badger. 

 Some months after, the dogs were killed ; and numerous encysted 

 larval Trichince were found in their muscular tissue '. 



In many villages and other localities in Germany the inhabitants 

 had been afflicted by diseases, varying in their symptoms from those 

 of dysentery and pneumonia to those of acute rheumatism, the 

 discovery of the cause of which is due to Dr. Zencker. At his 

 hospital at Dresden was admitted a young woman, who, after a 

 month's suffering under these symptoms, died. None of the 

 accepted remedial measures for such seeming diseases availed. On 

 a post mortem examination her muscles were found to be infested by 

 numerous Trichina ; but these were uncysted : similar vermicules 

 were discovered in the intestinal mucus ; but these differed in having 

 the genital tubes developed, in which were embryo Trichina. It 

 was found that the patient had eaten, shortly before the illness, 

 pork sausages. Some of the same sausages having been obtained, 

 Zencker detected therein numerous encysted Trichina. 



Experiments, suggested by this case, were repeated by Leuckart and 

 Virchow, the occasions being, unhappily, too frequent and numerous 

 in Germany ; and the cases of a supposed epidemic which had 

 ravaged certain localities were determined, mainly by such vivi- 

 sectional experiments as Zencker's, to be, one and all, due to eating 

 the flesh of trichinosed pigs in an uncooked or imperfectly cooked 

 state. 



For the symptoms by which the malady now known as Trichi- 

 nosis simulates several well-defined diseases from other causes, I mav 

 refer to my paper "On the Scientific Status of Medicine," read at* 

 the International Medical Congress held in London, 3rd August, 

 1881 -. 



Living larvse of Trichina, introduced into the human stomach, 

 there and in the intestinal tract rapidly acquire maturity, develop 

 their generative organs and products ; and, being viviparous, the 

 larvse, in vast numbers, perforate the intestinal tunics, gain admission 

 to the capillaries, are carried by the veins to the right half of the 

 heart, are difi'used through the lungs, are returned to the left cavities 

 of the heart, are distributed by the arteries to the rest of the body, 

 but, by a peculiar organic attraction, make their escape from the 

 vascular system and settle in the muscular tissue, within the sarco- 

 lemma ; and there they grow and cause such changes in the plasma 

 effused by their irritation, as to enclose themselves, usually in a few 

 coils, in the elliptic cysts which at one stage of condensation have 

 been taken for hydatids, and at a later stage, through accumulation 

 of earthy particles, for diffused gouty deposits. 



' Annales dea Sciences Naturelles (Zoologie), 1852. 

 ^ Transactions of the Congress, vol. iii. p. 440. 



