Remarks on Parasites. 205 



The experience of recent years has shewn, that there is 

 nothing very inimical to the health of European Officers in the 

 climate of Khyouk Phyoo, and the mortality in former years 

 was mainly owing to the want of good houses, to unnecessary 

 exposure to the sun, and to the irregular habits of life which 

 used to prevail, at Akyab more especially. 



Remarks on Parasites. 



[In our last volume, our readers were presented with pretty copious exposi- 

 tions of two of the most popular modern theories of disease, both possessed 

 of much ingenuity, and one of them very generally though over-hastily 

 adopted. Indeed as to the chemical theory, Liebig himself now doubts the 

 very existence of protein, the oxidation of which formed the corner stone 

 of his whole system. And as to the natural historical one, which has never 

 been so popular, it seems not improbable, that the animal and vegetable 

 parasites which, according to it, were the supposed exciting causes of disease, 

 are only to be found in the altered secretions, that is, in the products of 

 disease. The following remarks of Henle on parasites possess a good deal of 

 interest from bearing on the question of equivocal generation. They form 

 a supplement to his paper in the last volume.] — J. M. P. 



The present age is not in general inclined to adopt the 

 doctrine of equivocal generation, partly owing to the more 

 accurate modes of research now in use, and partly owing to 

 the important discoveries which have been made as to the 

 structure of the lower organizations, which used to be set 

 down as products of equivocal generation. The following 

 points are opposed to the spontaneous development of the 

 Entozoa, and render their propagation by means of ova more 

 intelligible. 



1. The extraordinary degree of development of the ge- 

 nerative apparatus, and the immense fertility of most entozoa. 

 Thus a female round worm is believed to contain about 

 60,000,000 eggs, and the tape worm besides forming hundred 

 of eggs in each of its numerous joints, throws off from its 

 head whole rows of joints, and reproduces them. The like 

 is the case with the Bothriocephalus latus and Punctatus. 



