EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
399 
being struck with the connection w r hich appears to exist 
between the phases of the disease and the consumption 
of the pork on certain days. American pork, it is known, 
sometimes harbours Trichinae, and with the evidence before 
him, which was the outcome of the inquiry, Mr. Power 
almost inevitably accepted the idea that the disease was not 
typhoid fever, but trichinosis. It only remained to put 
this last conclusion to the test of experiment, and for this 
purpose the body of the boy who had died on board the “ Corn¬ 
wall ” was exhumed, and some of the muscles submitted 
to microscopic examination, in the course of which nume¬ 
rous small nematodes were discovered, some of them still 
living. None of the parasites were encysted, and none of 
them w T ere spiral in form; and the drawing of one of the 
w T orms which is given in the report is, in plain terms, quite 
unlike the very familiar Trichina spiralis. 
Of course, the differences in the anatomical characters of 
the nematode worm which was found in the muscles of the 
boy, as compared with those of Trichinee, did not escape 
Mr. Power’s notice, in fact, he comments on them in his 
report; nevertheless he retains the term trichinosis as the 
proper designation of the disease from which the boys on 
board the “ Cornwall” suffered. 
Our colleague, Dr. Cobbold, to whom a copy of Mr. 
Power’s report was sent by Dr. Buchanan, did not endorse 
the writer’s views, as will appear from the letter which he 
addressed to the Times of May 3rd, in which the following 
passage occurs :—“ I wish to state that there is not in the 
said report a particle of evidence that the outbreak in ques¬ 
tion had anything to do with trichinosis.” 
The Lancet of May 8th, in an article headed “ Trichino¬ 
sis and Trichinosis,” makes the following curious remarks : 
“ What Dr. Cobbold apparently wishes to state is that in 
his opinion the nematode parasite discovered by Mr. Power 
in the fatal case of illness on board the tf Cornwall ’ was 
not the Trichina spiralis w r ith which the profession is toler¬ 
ably familiar, and to which Mr. Power’s conclusions seem to 
point, but some other seemingly unknown form of nematode 
