584 DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBGENUS ECHINOCOCCIFEE. 



worms,^ while in 1781 the "balls" therein contained were ranked 

 along with the Ccenurus-hea,ds which had been just discovered by 

 Leske.2 The proof of the correctness of this opinion was furnished 

 by Goze, who in 1782 showed that the heads really belonged to 

 Tcenice, and possessed suckers and hook-apparatus, and also soon 

 recognised that they were independent forms, and could not be 

 ranked beside the " white bodies or worms in the brain of the sheep 

 afflicted with staggers," since they were "several hundred times 

 smaller."" And this was applied not only to the EcMtwcoccus of the 

 cattle, but also to that of man, and that through a specimen which 

 the elder Meckel had sent for closer scrutiny to the indefatigable 

 helminthologist and pastor at St. Blasius in QuedUnburg.* Sub- 

 sequent observers were not all equally successful in their search for 

 these heads, and thus it happened that some even disputed the 

 existence of real Echinococci in man,^ and, like Laennec, regarded 

 the bladders as a special animal . organism (Acephahcystis) which 

 stood in the lowest rank of animal life, and in a certain sense filled 

 up the gap between the inanimate serous cysts and the ordinary 

 bladder- worms.*' 



In many cases these so-called " acephalocysts " were, indeed, 

 nothing else than hydatid-like pseudoplasms, which had, of course, no 

 connection with animal parasites, and were readily distinguished 

 from the Echinococci, not only by their continuous connection with 

 the surrounding tissue, but also histologically and chemically by the 

 nature of their bladder-wall. 



Although Bremser in 1821 again proved that the encapsuled 

 Echinococcus-bla.Mexs of man had heads as well as the so-called E. 

 veterinorum, yet, till within a few decades, the old opinion was still 

 maintained, that there were acephalocysts representing a special 



^ Stralsunder Magazin, i., p. 81. "It seems to me very probable," he says, "that 

 the incompletely developed water vesicles seen by many observers in the human body, 

 such as those oftenest found in pathological cavities in the liver, are caused by and arise 

 from a worm resembling our own tape- worms {i.e., Twnia hyd<Uigena = Oysticercus)." 



' Neue nord. Beitrdge, Th. i., p. 85. 



° " Versuch einer Naturgesch.," p. 158. 



* This is the same case which gave rise to the above-mentioned opinion that Canurus 

 occurred in man — an opinion still strangely maintained by Kuchenmeister (" Parasiten," 

 second edition, p. 57). It " was for long indeed " generally accepted, until Easmussen 

 (1865) distinctly proved that it "referred to an i'c/wTiococcMS given by Meckel to Goze, 

 and found among the effects of the latter." Kuchenmeister seems to have entirely over- 

 looked the above passage quoted verbally from the older edition of this work. 



^ The word Echinococcus, strictly speaking, is applicable only to the head, and was 

 formerly so used. 



° " M^m. sur les vers visc6r. et principal, sur oeux qui se trouvent dans le corps 

 humain :" Paris, 1804. 



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