At a meeting of this Society on the 18th of October last I narrated the
case of a patient, Miss H⸺, affected with _Filaria loa_, and I exhibited
a male worm which I had removed from under the conjunctiva of her left
eye. I purpose now to give a short account of the further history of that
patient, and a description of a female _Filaria loa_ which I succeeded in
removing from her right upper eyelid.
After the removal of the filaria from under the conjunctiva, Miss H⸺
was not troubled with the sensations she associates with the presence
of a worm for a period of about six weeks, when again she experienced
a burrowing sensation at the back of her left eye. It affected her at
intervals, and especially when she was occupying a hot room.
On the 3rd of February she distinctly felt a worm moving about in her
left upper eyelid, and came at once to me, but before she arrived this
feeling had gone, and I failed to discover any signs of the parasite. She
returned on the 6th of February with the statement that not only had she
felt the worm moving about in the left lower lid, but that it had also
been distinctly seen wriggling under the skin. I saw her three different
times that day, but failed to observe anything that might indicate with
certainty the presence of a parasite, although she sat in front of a
hot fire and had a succession of hot poultices applied, so as to tempt
the worm to the surface. On the third visit, as she felt the wriggling
of the worm, and as there seemed to be a little fulness at one point in
the left lower lid, I decided to cut down at that point and search for
the parasite. This I did with Dr. Mackay’s assistance, having first of
all applied clamp-forceps so as to prevent the worm escaping if it were
there. I failed to find any parasite, although I made a careful search,
and the patient showed great nerve and steadiness under operation, but I
noticed a distinct narrow channel or burrow parallel to the edge of the
lid, and crossing about the middle of it, which gave me the impression of
being a burrow by which the worm had moved across the lid.
Two days later Miss H⸺ came complaining of a swelling in the right
temporal region. This swelling seemed pretty deeply situated, and firm
palpation failed to reveal any corded feeling such as might indicate the
presence of a worm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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