Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals: Including Some Account of the EctozoaCobbold, T. Spencer (Thomas Spencer)
Science
Parasites: A Treatise on the Entozoa of Man and Animals: Including Some Account of the Ectozoa
Cobbold, T. Spencer (Thomas Spencer)
Helminths; Parasites
that they originally took up their abode in the biliary ducts. Although,
thanks to the courtesy of Professor Arnold Heller in giving me a
specimen, I have been enabled to confirm much that has been written
in respect of the morbid appearances, I can add nothing towards the
solution of the difficulty in question. Until lately it was supposed
that the multilocular variety of hydatids only existed in man, but
Professor Böllinger has encountered it in the liver of a calf.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--Ectocyst, endocyst, and brood capsule of
Echinococcus. From a Zebra. After Huxley.]
Selecting any ordinary fresh example of the exogenous kind, and laying
the tumour open with a scalpel, we notice in the first instance an
escape of a clear transparent, amber-coloured fluid. This previously
caused the distension of the sac. If the tumour is large, this
escape will probably be followed by a falling in, as it were, of the
gelatiniform hydatid membrane, in which case the inner wall of the
external adventitious investment or true fibrous cyst will be laid
bare. If the hydatid be next withdrawn from the cyst, it will be seen
to display a peculiar tremulous motion, at the same time coiling upon
itself wherever there is a free-cut margin. Further examination of
portions of the hydatid will show that we have two distinct membranes;
an outer, thick, laminated, homogeneous elastic layer (the _ectocyst_
of Huxley), and an internal, thin, soft, granulated, comparatively
inelastic layer--the _endocyst_ of the same author. The terms are
convenient. The ectocyst is structureless, consisting of a substance
closely allied to chitine. For this and other reasons it has been called
the cuticular layer, but the endocyst is the essential vital part of the
animal, representing a huge compound caudal vesicle. In an hydatid from
the zebra, Huxley found that the endocyst was “not more than 1/2000th of
an inch in thickness, being composed of very delicate cells of 1/2000″
to 1/5000″ in diameter, without obvious nuclei; but often containing
clear, strongly refracting corpuscles, generally a single one only in a
cell.” Prof. Huxley adds: “These corpuscles appear to be solid, but by
the action of dilute acetic acid the interior generally clears up very
rapidly, and a hollow vesicle is left of the same size as the original
corpuscle. No gas is developed during this process, and sometimes the
corpuscles are not acted upon at all by the acid, appearing then to
be of a fatty nature. A strong solution of caustic ammonia produces a
concentrically laminated or fissured appearance in them. Under pressure
and with commencing putrefaction a number of them sometimes flow
together into an irregular or rounded mass.”
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