TEICHINA SPIRALIS. 347 



dwell ; but in regard to the disease, as it affects the human body, 

 much more remains to be noted. Let ns, for example, glance at 

 the phenomena of the disease as they presented themselves in 

 Plauen, a town of Central Saxony. Drs. Boehler and Konigsdoffer, 

 who first saw this disease and treated it, state, according to 

 Leuckart, that " the affection began with a sense of prostration, 

 attended with extreme painfulness of the limbs ; and, after these 

 symptoms had lasted several days, an enormous swelling of the 

 face very suddenly supervened. The pain occasioned by this 

 swelling and the fever troubled the patients night and day. In 

 serious cases the patients could not voluntarily extend their limbs, 

 nor at any time without pain. They lay mostly with their arms 

 and legs half bent — heavily, as it were, and almost motionless, 

 like a log. Afterwards, in the more serious cases, during the 

 second and third week, an extremely painful and general swelhn^ 

 of the body took place ; yet, although the fifth part of all the 

 patients were numbered amongst the serious cases, only one died." 

 Satisfactory as it may be to note the numerous recoveries which 

 take place, this circumstance is very much marred by the fact that 

 a large proportion of the patients suffer the most excruciating 

 agony. In the main, it will be observed that Boehler' s and Koe- 

 nigsdoeffer's experience, as recorded by Leuckart, corresponds 

 very closely with that given by other observers — the symptoms 

 being also very similar to those produced in the original case 

 published by Zenker. In this case (which occurred in the Dresden 

 Hospital, in the month of January, 1860) the patient was a servant 

 girl, aged twenty, and the principal symptoms were loss of appetite, 

 prostration, violent pains, contraction of the limbs, and finally 

 oedema, which, in association, perhaps, with a certain amount of 

 pneumonia, terminated her career within a period of thirty days. 

 As this case has been quoted by Leuckart, Davaine, Aitken, and 

 many others, and as it has also appeared in several of our BngHsh 

 scientific periodicals, I need only add that the post-mortem appear- 

 ances showed that the larval Trichinae were the cause of death. 



