Trichiniasis, which was the name given to the disease caused by these worms, reminds us of tarantism, that is to say, the effects produced by the bite of the tarantula. Mons. Ozanam wrote an interesting work on this subject, in which he said that nervous tarantism existed 243 during two centuries in Europe, as an epidemic malady. According to him, there prevails at present in the province of Tigre, in Abyssinia, a sort of chorea, or endemic musicomania, which has a great analogy with tarantism; it is the "Tigretier." Nothing but music and dancing can have any beneficial effect during the crisis; but these means would evidently be inefficacious in trichiniasis. [Illustration: Fig. 70.--Trichina.] [Illustration: Fig. 71.--Trichina, rolled up in a muscle.] The Trichina is a nematode worm, and not an insect, as it was at first called. Let us imagine an extremely slender pin, such as entomologists employ to fasten the smallest insects, rolled upon itself in a spiral form so as to lodge in a cavity hollowed out in the midst of the muscles, in a space not larger than a grain of millet. These trichinæ 244 of the muscles can be discerned by the naked eye. But before we enter on a particular description (and they are now known in their minutest details), let us notice what were the circumstances which led to their attracting so much attention. It was in 1832; a demonstrator of a course of anatomy at Guy's Hospital in London, Mr. J. Hilton, found in the flesh of a man sixty-six years of age, who died of a cancer, a great number of little white bodies which he took for vesicular worms. The scalpel, during the dissection of the muscles, met with granulations which blunted the edge of the instrument. Astonished to find in the flesh hard corpuscules which the instrument divided with difficulty, he removed some of them, examined them attentively, but, no doubt, he was not sufficiently acquainted with helminthology to understand their true nature. He referred to Professor R. Owen, the celebrated naturalist of the British Museum, who recognized them as new worms, and gave them the name of _Trichina_, because they are as thin as a hair; he added the specific name of _spiralis_ on account of the manner in which they were rolled up in their cyst. _Trichina spiralis_ is therefore the name of this animal.