662 
FILAR1A IN THE EYE. 
some facts of this kind. A case was related to him bv Dr. 
Gaertner, who resided in the West Indies, and considered it 
to be the guinea-worm.* 
Dr. Thos. G. Morton, of this city, has given an interesting 
account of a filaria ( Dracunculus , or Filarialoa ) removed by 
a native woman from beneath the conjunctiva of the eyeball 
of a negress at Gaboon, West Africa, with a brief history of 
the parasite, and Professor Leidy’s description of the speci¬ 
men.t 
Cobbold says: “ These worms are identical with those 
described by Guyot as dwelling beneath the conjunctiva of 
negroes at Congo and the Gaboon region generally.'Da- 
vaine has reported several similar cases, and refers to them 
as La Jllairie de Vorbite. § 
The Filaria lentis (Cobbold), and what is identical, the 
Filaria oculi Jiumani (Nordmann), was discovered by the last- 
named investigator in the year 1831 .|| Dr. Nordmann ex¬ 
amined two lenticular cataracts taken from an elderly man, 
half an hour after they had been extracted by Prof, von 
Graefe. In one of these, which was partially surrounded by 
the capsule, he observed in the Morgagnian fluid two very 
small and delicate rings, which he clearly recognised under 
the microscope as convoluted Filariae. One of the two had 
been injured in the middle, so that the intestines had come 
out of the body, and were visible as slender threads. The 
other was uninjured, of uniform thickness, three quarters of a 
line long, and extremely narrow. It was spirally convoluted 
and dead. A simple intestinal canal, a mouth with visible 
papillae, a uterus, and a prominent anal aperture could be 
distinguished [Lib. cit., pp. 7, 8). 
In 1832 he was present at two operations of extraction, 
performed on an old women by Prof. Jiingken, and found a 
living filaria, five lines and a half long, in the act of casting 
its skin (in der haiitung begriffene), in the lens of the first 
patient (a case of green, lenticular cataract); no living ex¬ 
traneous body was found in the other lens. The second case 
was more interesting, as it presented the first example of 
microscopical entozoa, possessing suckers [Trematoda Ru - 
doljjhi), being found in the human eye; eight individuals of 
the genus monostroma were found in the substance of the lens. 
These minute beings were situated in the upper strata of the 
* ‘ Handbueli der Pathologischen Anatomie des Menschlichen Auges,’ pp. 
22G, 227. 
f American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Phila., July, 1877. 
% ‘Entozoa, 5 London, 1864, p. 288. 
§ Davaine, ‘Traite des Entozoaires,’ Paris. 1860, p. 750. 
|| Nordmann, ‘ Mic. Beitriige z. Nat. d. Wirb. Thiere.’ 
