She was placed on a couch and the speculum applied, when the pressure
of the finger having been removed the wriggling movements of the worm
were resumed, as briskly as before the application of the cocaine. I now
grasped with a pair of toothed fixing forceps a good fold of conjunctiva
over the centre of the wriggling worm, taking care to include in the fold
all structures superficial to the sclerotic. I next made with a pair of
scissors an incision through the conjunctiva a little nearer the cornea,
in such a manner as to lift up a small flap of conjunctiva, and after a
little careful separation of the tissues found one extremity of the worm,
which I seized with a pair of iris forceps. On now relaxing the fixing
forceps the parasite came away readily. No irritation or inflammation
followed the operation.
The worm presented the appearance of a piece of fishing-gut, being
round, firm, transparent, and colourless. It wriggled slightly for a few
minutes after removal while held in the forceps, but on being placed
in a solution of boracic acid, so as to prevent it becoming dry, it
seemed completely to lose its vitality. It measured 25 mm. in length and
barely half a millimetre in breadth. It terminated rather abruptly at
one extremity, scarcely tapering at all, but at the other it gradually
tapered to a pretty sharply curved fine point. Twisted round the worm,
and apparently attached to it near its centre, was a much finer, less
firm, transparent filamentous body, which I at first thought might
possibly prove to be a second young filaria, or even the male filaria,
but which on further careful microscopical examination appears to be
the alimentary canal of the worm protruded through an opening in its
musculo-cutaneous wall, caused by the forcible grasping of the parasite
with the forceps.
The worm after removal was, on the suggestion of Dr. Muir, Pathologist
to the Infirmary, placed in a mixture of equal parts of glycerine and
methylated spirits, but the cork of the bottle in which the mixture was
put had retained some of the blue colouring matter (methyl violet) of
a solution previously in the bottle, and thus the preservative mixture
became faintly blue-tinted. The parasite absorbed the colouring matter
slightly, but the filamentous body projecting from it absorbed it more
freely, becoming markedly blue-tinted. After remaining in the solution
between three and four weeks the parasite was carefully mounted as a
microscopic preparation in glycerine jelly by Mr. Simpson, assistant
keeper of the University Anatomical Museum.
It is not my intention to attempt an account of the natural history
of the parasite, as I propose to submit the specimen to some special
authority in that department.
I have had some sketches of it made by a competent artist, and these, as
well as the preparation itself under the microscope, I have pleasure in
exhibiting to you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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