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 Trichine 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 aud 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 Triching ; 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 Trichine. 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 Trichine. 
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 may 
refer to my paper “On the Scientific Status of Medicine,” read at: 
the International Medical Congress held in London, 3rd August, 
1881°. 
Living larvee 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 
larvee, 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 diffused 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 des Sciences Naturelles (Zoologie), 1852. 
* Transactions of the Congress, yol. iii. p. 440. 
