67 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO ZOOLOGICAL PATHOLOGY. 
[From the Annales de Chemie et de Physique, vol. 82, anno 1843.] 
Translated by James Mercer, M.D., F.R.C.S.E., Lecturer on 
Anatomy , Edinburgh. 
Part * * On the ” Verminous Alterations " of the Blood of the 
Dog, as determined by the great number of “ Hema- 
TOZAIRS ” of the Genus FlLARlA, by MM. 
Gruby and Delafond. 
Physiologists and anatomists have for a long time stated, 
undeniedly, that the presence of certain entozairs in the nourishing 
fluids of animals depended on the cold state of the blood, as found 
in frogs and fishes. In the mammiferous animals the same fila- 
ments have sometimes been found in the course of the circulation 
of their blood ; but it is very probable that these filaments got 
into the circulation after having perforated the structures of those 
organs where they had been developed. It is, then, a point of 
great importance to physiology, pathology, and natural history, to 
demonstrate not only the existence of circulating entozaria in the 
course of the blood, but also to prove their constant presence in 
that fluid in those animals which come near in structure to that 
of man. But as science does not possess, at the present time, a 
demonstrative example of the exact manner of the circulation of 
these filaments in the blood of the mammifera, we shall, shortly, 
give that part to the Academie of the discovery which we have 
made of those “ entozaires ” that are found circulating in the blood 
of a dog of a vigorous constitution, and apparently in a good state 
of health. 
These filaments were of a diameter from 0.003 millimetre to 
0.005 millimetre. The body is transparent, and without any 
colour. The anterior extremity is obtuse, and the posterior, or 
caudal, is terminated in a very slender filament. Towards the 
anterior part we observed a small hair-like * furrow, of length 
about 0.0005 millimetre, which might perhaps be considered as a 
buccal fissure. 
From all these characters, this species of “hematozaria” attaches 
itself to. the genus “ Filarial' 
The movements of these animals are very vivid, their vitality 
even persisting for ten days after the blood has been drawn from 
the bloodvessels, and received into a vessel placed in a tempera- 
ture of 15 centigrades. On examining a drop of this blood under 
