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
In reference to museum evidence I have no hesitation in saying that the
pathological collections in the metropolis abound in rare and remarkable
illustrations of hydatid disease; most of the preparations being
practically known only to such few members of the medical profession
as have been at some time or other officially connected with the
museums. Not without justice, curators often complain that their work
and catalogues are turned to little account. As a former conservator of
the Edinburgh University Anatomical Museum (1851-56), and subsequently
as museum-curator at the Middlesex Hospital Medical College, I am
in a position to sympathise with them. Valuable, however, as the
catalogues are, it is often necessary to make a close inspection of the
preparations in order to arrive at a correct interpretation of the facts
presented.
Although the entozoal preparations in the museum attached to St
Bartholomew’s Hospital are, comparatively speaking, few in number, there
are some choice specimens of hydatid disease. There is a remarkable
case in which hydatids invaded the right half of the bones of the
pelvis; death resulting from suppurative inflammation of the cysts. This
patient, a woman, had also another hydatid cyst which was connected
with the ovary. Amongst the series contributed by Dr Farre, there is
a case represented where a large cyst containing numerous hydatids
“occupied the pelvis of an infant and produced retention of urine,”
which ultimately proved fatal. There are also several fine examples of
hydatids from the omentum (Dr Farre’s case), besides a good specimen
of acephalocysts connected with the vesiculæ seminales. There are two
other cases in which these larval entozoa were passed with the urine.
At the time when I made my inspection, the entire series represented
twenty-five separate cases, of which only one appears to have been
published in detail (Mr Evans’s case, ‘Medico-Chirurgical Transactions,’
1832). In addition to the above, I must not omit to particularise two
instructive preparations illustrative of a case in which an hydatid was
lodged in the right half of the cerebrum. This was from a girl in whom
head symptoms showed themselves a year before death, and in whom there
was partial hemiplegia of the left side. I may add that there is also in
the series a doubtfully genuine example of hydatids of the breast.
The collection in connection with the Westminster Hospital contains
several highly interesting specimens of entozoa (one of which I believe
to be altogether unique), but it is by no means rich in the matter
of hydatids. Out of a score of preparations of parasites of various
kinds, only four (apparently representing the same number of cases) are
hydatids, all of which appear to have been connected with the liver.
Two are certainly so, one of the latter (Mr Holthouse’s case) showing
calcareous degeneration.
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