30i 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1026 



elapsed before M. Davaine in 1859^ made tlie 

 same observation in almost identical language 

 suggesting the vegetal nature of the Vibrio — 

 its alliance to the Algse and especially the 

 Confervas. 



Leidy continues in the same number of the 

 Proceedings : 



But it must not be understood that these facts 

 militate against the hypothesis of the production 

 of contagious diseases through the agency of 

 eryptogamia. It is well established that there 

 are microscopic eryptogamia capable of pro- 

 ducing and transmitting disease, as in the case 

 of the Muscardine, etc., as that there are in- 

 nocuous and poisonons fungi. In many instances 

 it is difficult to distinguish their character, 

 whether as cause or effect, as upon diseased sur- 

 faces, in Tinea capitis, apthous ulcers, etc. In a 

 post-mortem examination, in which I assisted Dr. 

 Horner,7 a few weeks since, 28 hours after death, 

 in moderately cool weather, we found the stomach 

 in a much softened condition. In the mucus of 

 the stomach, I detected myriads of mycodermatoid 

 filaments, resembling those growing upon the teeth ; 

 simple, floating, inarticulate and measuring from 

 1/7,000 to 1/520 of an inch in length by 1/25,000 

 of an inch in breadth. It is possible that they may 

 have been the cause of the softened condition; but 

 I would prefer thinking that swallowed mycoder- 

 matoid filaments from the teeth, finding an excel- 

 lent nidus in the softening stomach, rapidly grew 

 and reproduced themselves. In the healthy human 

 stomach these do not exist. 



In the stomach of a diabetic patient, I found so 

 very few that they probably did not grow there, 

 but were swallowed in the saliva. 



A note is appended to this report: 

 Note: — Since the above went to press. Dr. 

 Leidy announced to the academy that he had dis- 

 covered two new species of the entophyte Entero- 

 hrus; one of them, E. spiralis, growing in the 

 small intestine Julus pusillus; the other, E. attenu- 

 atus, growing more or less profusely with a second 

 species of Cladophytum, C. clavatum, in the ven- 

 triculus of the coleopterous insect, Passalus cor- 

 nutus. Thus has ieen established the law "that 

 plants mm/ grow m the interior of the healthy ani- 

 mal as a norTnal condition," and a new field has 



<iEend. Comp., Paris, 1859, V., 58, 59; also 

 "Traite d'es Entozoaries, " Paris, 1860. 



7 W. E. Horner, professor of anatomy. Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania, 1849. 



heen presented for the investigation of the Crypto- 

 game-naturalist. (See forthcoming number of the 

 Proceedings.) 8 



Also in December, 1849, appears: 



Besides the foregoing I have found numerous 

 free or floating entophyta in the contents, usually 

 of the posterior part of the alimentary canal, in 

 mammalia, aves, reptilia, pisoes, mollusca, insecta, 

 etc. These, at present, I do not feel at liberty to 

 describe as new or peculiar, from my want of ac- 

 quaintance with cryptogamic botany. A number 

 of them, I have no doubt, if not peculiar, at least 

 continue to grow luxuriantly in the intestinal 

 canal; such are various Mycoderma, etc.; others 

 very probably are swallowed with the food, and 

 pass from the intestinal canal unchanged. Nu- 

 merous drawings of these I exhibit to the Acad- 

 emy, and purpose leaving them to future investi- 

 gation, or to the consideration of cryptogamic bot- 

 anists, being a field well worthy of their re- 

 searches. I also have a number of others, the char- 

 acter of which is peculiarly entophytic; but these 

 I have not yet studied out nor figured, but hope to 

 present descriptions of them to the academy in a 

 very short time. 



These researches upon the morphology and 

 vegetal nature of the Vibrio and Spirillum; 

 the suggestion of polymorphism, much dilated 

 upon by later observers; the enunciation of a 

 new law of the general existence of a para- 

 sitic intestinal flora of cryptogamic vegetation 

 existing throughout the animal kingdom as a 

 normal condition; the pathological signifi- 

 cance of the presence of germs upon diseased 

 surfaces, as to cause or efFeet; the suggestion 

 of the inherent resistance of healthy living 

 tissues to certain forms of vegetal parasites, 

 are of more than historic interest. 



As bearing upon the various types of micro- 

 scopes then in use (1849). It is of interest to 

 note in the last paper, he describes for the 

 first time muscular strise in the posterior cell, 

 and later the anterior cell, of a new species of 

 gregarina, determining its animality' which 



8 " A Flora and Fauna within Living Animals, ' ' 

 Smithsonian Institution, 1851. 



0" Gregarina Dufox," Proc. A. N. S., 1849 

 See also ' ' Collected Researches in Helminthology 

 and Parasitology," by Joseph Leidy, 1823-91, 

 Smithsonian Institution, 1904. 



