S Henry B. Ward 



"On one occasion the worm lay across the center of the field 

 of vision of her left eye for spme time, though a careful exam- 

 ination failed to discover it on the anterior surface of the eye ; 

 at that time the worm moved with the movements of the eye, 

 being apparently within the eyeball itself. No ophthalmoscopic 

 examination was made, so there was only the patient's history of 

 the occurrence to suggest the penetration of the eyeball. 



"These specimens were shown before the Toronto Patholog- 

 ical Society, and a brief history given, but no paper has been 

 published concerning them. I saw this patient again in May, 

 1899, ^"d up to that time she had had no further trouble." 



The largest group of specimens I was privileged to examine 

 came to me through the courtesy of Dr. J. H. Murphy and Dr. 

 D. T, Vail of Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition to several fragments 

 belonging probably to two worms, there were two perfect speci- 

 mens of a female F. loa in alcohol and one specimen in balsam, 

 probably entire, although both ends of the latter worm were 

 badly mutilated or shrunken in mounting and so imperfectly 

 cleared that it was impossible to determine the sex or the char- 

 acter of these parts of the body. The cuticular bosses, which 

 were so well described and figured by Blanchard (1899) for 

 F. loa, are distinctly visible, and the general appearance of the 

 body, in comparison with other unmistakable specimens of F. loa, 

 leaves little doubt that this worm belongs to the species under 

 consideration. The precise determination of this specimen is 

 all the more important since it is the one removed by Dr. L, 

 from his wife's breast. He extracted one of these worms from 

 the skin overlying the sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle and another 

 from her left breast. One entire specimen in alcohol bears his 

 name also on the label and is no doubt the other worm noted. 

 It is a perfect specimen of a female F. loa. I think this is the 

 first instance in which a supposed F. loa removed in life from 

 any other part of the body than the vicinity of the eye has fallen 

 into the hands of a helminthologist for careful examination and 

 determination. In view of the very large number of Filariae 

 already reported from Africa, even though the fauna is neces- 

 sarily most imperfectly known, the reports of the extraction of 



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