The Whip-Worm. 325 



THE WHIP-WORM. 



BY T. SPENCER COBBOLD, H.D., F.L.S., 



Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, Zoology, and Botany, at the Middlesex 

 Hospital Medical College. 



{With a Tinted Plate.) 



A moee appropriate name than, the above could scarcely bo 

 devised for this interesting parasite. The species which 

 dwells in the human body appears to have been first noticed 

 by the distinguished Italian anatomist John Baptist Mor- 

 gagni, and it was subsequently described by Buttner and 

 Roederer, under the generic title of Trichuris, signifying 

 hair-tailed worm. The circumstances which led to its re- 

 discovery are thus recorded by Moquin-Tandon in (Huhne's 

 edition of) his Elements of Medical Zoology : <c Daring the 

 winter of 1760-61, a student of Gottingen, who was dissect- 

 ing the valve of the colon in the body of a young girl five years 

 old, accidentally opened the cEecurn, when several entozoa 

 came out. H. A. Wrisberg and some other students considered 

 that these worms belonged to a species not previously known. 

 The prosector, 0. T. Wagler, maintained that they were Oxy- 

 urides of a very large size. Other persons mistook them 

 for very small Ascarides. From this a serious discussion, or 

 rather quarrel, arose, which might have been easily settled if 

 the newly- discovered worm had only been carefully compared 

 either with an Ascaris or an Oxyuris. Roederer, having heard 

 of the dispute, had the animal in question brought to him, and 

 having examined it with Buttner, they both came to the con- 

 clusion that it was a new species/'' They accordingly named 

 it Trichuris, under an erroneous impression that the long, nar- 

 row, filamentary part of the body was only the tail. All the 

 species of the genus as now known display this remarkable cha- 

 racter more or less conspicuously, and in some, as, for example, 

 in the one selected for illustration in the accompanying plate 

 (fig. 1), the thong-like portion of the worm is extremely 

 attenuated. 



As frequently happens upon the discovery of any novelty, 

 all sorts of strange notions were soon afloat as to the signifi- 

 cance of this new parasite, and consequently we find an other- 

 wise intelligent physician writing a long dissertation, Be Morbo 

 Mucoso, with the view of proving that this perfectly harmless 

 little whip-worm was the sole cause of a choleraic dysentery 

 raging in the ranks of a division of the French army then 

 stationed at Gottingen. Other crude ideas, unsupported 

 by facts, were taken up and exploded in due time, whilst 



