LIFE-HISTOET OF FILARIA BANCROFTI. 



357 



importance. The practical issues especially affect the welfare of 

 persons resident in warm countries. 



In the year 1868 Dr. O. "Wucherer, since deceased, published 

 a paper in the ' Bahia Medical G-azette,' entitled, " Preliminary 

 JN^otice of a hitherto undescribed Species of Worm encountered 

 in the urine of persons affected wdth the intertropical hseraaturia 

 of Brazil" (Ref. No. 1*). Dr. AVucherer first discovered this 

 entozoon on tlie 4th of August, 1866, when engaged in examining 

 the chylous or milky urine of a patient then under his care at 

 the Misericordia Hospital. He was at the time actually in search 

 of the Bilharzia licematohia. It was at the suggestion of Grie- 

 singer that Wucherer sought for this fluke ; and when thus 

 engaged he found in its place, so to say, " some filiform worms 

 which were very narrow at one extremity and very obtuse at the 

 other." As will be seen in the sequel, a similar experience after- 

 wards occurred to myself. Dr. Wucherer, with a caution worthy 

 of the true savant^ did not at once conclude that the urinary 

 parasites had actually passed from his patient ; therefore taking 

 the necessary steps to prevent error, he obtained a fresh supply 

 of the excretion in a carefully cleaned vessel, and almost imme- 

 diately afterwards verified his previous discovery. In the follow- 

 ing October, and also subsequently, Wucherer made similar 

 " finds." In two of these three instances the patients suffered 

 from chyluria; and in the third there was hsematuria. The 

 Filarice were in all cases living and active in their movements. 

 He did not notice any eggs f . 



In the year 1869 (when engaged in preparing a supplementary 

 bibliography to my introductory treatise on the Entozoa) I 

 chanced to stumble upon a paper by Dr. Salisbury which had 

 hitherto escaped the attention of helminthologists (Eef. No. 2). 

 In this memoir, published in 1868, Dr. Salisbury announces the 

 discovery of a small species of entozoon in the bladder of a 

 patient who passed milky urine. Dr. Salisbury had the boldness 

 at once to describe the worm as new to science, and placed it in 

 the genus Trichina (T. cystica, Salisb.). Nothing, I may remark, 

 coula be more striking than the difference of attitude assumed 



* The numbers here given refer to the Bibliography at the close of this 

 communication. 



t Some error as to the date of Wucherer's discovery has crept into the lite- 

 rature of this subject. Thus, in the 2nd edition of Davaine's ' Traite ' (p. 943) 

 the year 1868 is mentioned as that in which the original find was made. In 

 this matter I have followed the authority of Dr. Silva Lima. — T. S. C. 



