204 ENTOZOA. 



The disease is said to be more virulent in the summer months, 

 which is probably owing to the prevalence of the cercarian larvae 

 at the spring of the year. It makes very Httle difference, however, 

 as regards the prospect of cure, which, it need hardly be said, is 

 extremely feeble after the disorder has once fairly set in. Here, 

 indeed, remedies can be of little avail, the only treatment of any 

 value, as regards the general loss of strength, being simply pal- 

 liative and restorative. The great point to be aimed at is the 

 discovery of the precise source of the higher larvae of the parasite ; 

 and should it eventually turn out that these cercarise are limited to 

 any one or two particular intermediate hosts, then, certainly, helmin- 

 thologists would be in a position to show what precautions on the part 

 of the people might secure them from the invasion of this fatal 

 malady. At the same time, they would be able more cogently 

 to enforce a recognition of the truism that " prevention is better 

 than cure." 



Dr. John Harley, in his interesting paper on the hematuria of 

 the Cape of Good Hope, has suggested the employment of diure- 

 tics, but these remedies could be of httle avail since the seat of the 

 disorder is in the blood. His Distoma capense is certainly iden- 

 tical with Bilharzia hcematohia, and the symptoms produced by it 

 are, for the most part, similar to those above described. A refer- 

 ence to his cases will be found in the Bibliography. 



7. Teteastoma renale. 



T. renale, Delle Chiaje ; Diesing ; Dubini ; etc. 



The occurrence of this entozoon as a human parasite appears 

 hitherto to have escaped the notice of English zoologists, although 

 discovered by Lucarelli in 1826, and described by Delle Chiaje in 

 1833. All that we now know of it is due to the original descrip- 

 tion of Chiaje, from whose " Elmintografia Umana" we learn that 

 it attains a length of five lines, has an oval flattened body, and is 

 furnished with four suckers disposed in a quadrate manner at the 



