^84 TiMEHRI. 



produced amongst the workmen in the St. Gothard 

 tunnel ; and a like outbreak was noticed amongst the 

 miners of St. Etienne. The symptoms produced by 

 these entozoa as shown in their unconscious hosts, are 

 " extreme pallor of the visible mucous membranes, with 

 excessive weakness, dyspnoea, palpitation, and a tendency 

 to syncope. Dropsical effusions supervene, and death 

 sometimes follows from dysentery and diarrhoea ; but 

 the loss of blood consequent upon the su6lion wounds of 

 the Sclerotomes is the real cause of the malady, whether 

 the attacks prove fatal or not." Now it may be some- 

 what difficult to understand how it is that such very 

 minute animals are capable of sucking such a large 

 amount of blood from their unconscious hosts, as to pro- 

 duce such serious ravages. The a6lual amount of blood 

 capable of being extra6led by one of these parasites 

 must indeed be extremely small ; but once the wound in 

 the mucous membrane of the intestine has been pro- 

 duced numerous and various causes are continually 

 occurring to keep the flow of blood in motion, such as 

 the peristaltic a6lion of the intestinal walls and the 

 passage along the alimentary traft of the intestinal 

 fluids and any irritating particles. Then again it is only 

 in those individuals who may be so unfortunately hos- 

 pitable as to lodge hundreds and thousands of these 

 unwelcome guests, that anything like the above train of 

 symptoms can be produced. Cases occur over and over 

 again in which a few of these parasites have been found 

 post-mortem, whose hosts have presented none, or very 

 few of the above distressing train of symptoms. 



The length of the male parasite is about one third of 

 an inch, its width about one-twentieth of its length 



