400 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
parasite* for the source of which* as it affects man* we 
should look to an indifferent water-supply. Dr. Cobbold’s 
opinion upon a question of helminthology will properly carry 
great weight, but something more than even his opinion, its 
absoluteness notwithstanding, will be needed before it can 
be received that the parasite figured by Mr. Power is not 
Trichina spiralis. Mr. Power himself hesitates, from the 
microscopical character of the parasite alone* to affirm that 
it is so, but the tendency of the evidence to be derived from 
the outbreak of illness is to this conclusion. 
" Dr. Cobbold’s statement that ‘ we ought rather to look 
to an indifferent water-supply than to diseased meat as the 
primary cause of the outbreak 5 will excite amazement in 
the face of the evidence advanced by Mr. Power. The 
water-supply of the ‘ Cornwall ’ was and is common to the 
ship and a considerable population on shore* but the disease 
was confined to the ship. The succession of the cases ad¬ 
mitted of explanation if the cause were assumed to be con¬ 
nected with some article of food consumed on board* but not 
otherwise* so far as the seemingly exhaustive examination 
by Mr. Powder went. Dr. Cobbold would substitute the 
vaguest of suggestions for the results of a careful investiga¬ 
tion ! 
t( Dr. Cobbold is not happier when he touches upon the im¬ 
portant question raised by Mr. Power of the possible relation 
of certain febrile seizures to the wanderings of as yet un¬ 
detected and undetermined parasites. Mr. Power’s sugges¬ 
tions are already bearing fruit in the meetings of the Patho¬ 
logical Society; Dr. Cobbold’s observations simply go to 
raise an undefined but disquieting if not alarming spectre in 
the columns of a daily paper! As between f trichinosis ’ 
and the existence of hitherto unsuspected f wandering rhab- 
ditiform parasites,’ we apprehend that the public will not 
be apt to consider the latter as the more consolatory phrase* 
particularly when they come to know that their effects upon 
the human system may be quite as correctly described as, 
and actually constitute* a f trichinosis.’ When Dr. Cobbold 
writes that there is not f a particle of evidence 5 to show 
