358 



PROF. T. S. COBBOLD ON THE 



by "Wucherer and Salisbury respectively. The one savant was 

 timid and reserved, almost to silence, respecting his find (which 

 had absolute priority), whilst the other put a totally wrong con- 

 struction on the facts observed. Dr. Salisbury unhesitatingly 

 relegated these mere embryonal forms to a genus with which 

 there was not a shadow of proof that it was entitled to be 

 associated. 



During the month of March 1870, Dr. T. E. Lewis, of Calcutta, 

 noticed that minute Nematoid worms were present in chylous 

 urine. He did not, it seems, publish the fact at the time ; but in 

 his Memoirs, which appeared some years afterwards, he distinctly 

 records the circumstance. In October 1872 he repeated his in- 

 vestigation of the urine of one of the patients examined in 1870, 

 and had the satisfaction of finding the young Filaria, which "had 

 undergone no appreciable change." lie also examined the blood, 

 with results that will appear in the sequel. Dr. Lewis states 

 that Dr. Charles and Dr. Palmer were the first to verify his 

 observations respecting the presence of Filarice in chyluria. 



In the month of July 1870, whilst engaged in the examination 

 of the urine of a little girl (who was under my professional care 

 as a sufferer from the Bilharzia disease, which she had contracted 

 at Natal, South Africa), I discovered numerous eggs and em- 

 bryos of a nematode worm. Although thousands of fluke's 

 eggs passed daily from this child, with much blood, it never 

 occurred to me that the nematodes were hsBmatozoal. The cir- 

 cumstance that the child's parent had told me that three small 

 worms had long before passed by the urethra, led me to conclude 

 that they and their probable progeny were alike of urinary origin. 

 Had I examined a drop of blood from the finger, Dr. Lewis's 

 subsequent important discovery of microscopic Haematozoa 

 would probably have been anticipated. I do not at all regret 

 that I was thus misled. 



It was not until the spring of 1872 that I announced my 

 interesting find (Eef. No. 3). When doing so I did not seek 

 to secure scientific capital by imparting to mere embryos a generic 

 and specific title, but remained content to record the facts ob- 

 served, at the same time giving simple figures of the worm as 

 seen in the free and egg conditions. The notion which Leuckart 

 has since suggested, that the three mature worms alluded to were 

 Oxyurides, is by no means convincing (Eef. No. 4). As the 

 mother of the child more than once pointed to her finger's length 



