STRONGYLUS GIGAS. 379 



of urine. Much pus flowed from the opened tumour, and 

 the wound healed up. The disorder Mas renewed repeatedly 

 for three years, and the operation was repeated. At last a 

 worm, five inches long and of the thickness of a quill, came out 

 of the wound, and fiually a second worm, four inches long, but 

 then complete retention of urine occurred, until two similar 

 worms passed shortly after each other, and a perfect cure was 

 the result. 



Diesing enumerates only the cases of Blasius, Ruysch, and 

 Mouhlet, and adds to them a case of Bobe Moreau (' Journ. de 

 Med./ xlvii, Mai), and one of Stratton in the year 1843, which, 

 however, he has furnished with a ?. 



These are about all the cases in which true Nematoida come in 

 question at all, and which might be regarded with some probability 

 as Strongylus gigas} But nevertheless some of the cases here 

 referred to may not so much have concerned this species of worm 

 as the Ascaris lumbricoides. If therefore there is no doubt that 

 Strongylus gigas is to be reckoned amongst the Entozoa found in 

 man, we must undoubtedly be astonished that the worm has 

 remained almost entirely unobserved since the time when the 

 pathological anatomy of man raised itself to the rank of a science, 

 so that even Diesing refers to no certain case of recent occur- 

 rence. A case recently observed by Dr. Schenten, and repeatedly 

 referred to in the ' Deutscher Klinik/ for 1855 (for example in 

 No. 39), which was at first described with much certainty as 

 Strongylus of the kidney, consisted, according to Gurlt's investi- 

 gations, only of a blood-coagulum from the tubuli of the kidney. 

 In animals also it appears to have become and to be becoming 

 more and more rare, and it is not difficult to suppose that in a 

 short time we may have to do only with a historical and extinct 

 species of worm. 



For this reason it cannot be expected that I shall be able 

 to make any essential addition to what the few authors who 

 have dissected this worm have observed. What I ascertained 

 from a specimen kindly furnished to me for examination by 

 M. Gurlt, and already dissected by him, and from another female 

 specimen, the investigation of which was not permitted me, 

 but the dissection of which could not have been of any use to 

 science, relates merely to details of size. 



[' There is a fine specimen of this worm, taken from a human kidney, in the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. — Tkans.] 



