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
further be remarked that Henle, Küchenmeister, Davaine, myself, and
others, have pointed to a notice by Tiedemann as probably, or possibly,
indicating a prior observation of the specks. Leuckart rejects the
evidence. Dr Pagenstecher appears to be in doubt as to the nature of
the bodies in question. As the passage in question possibly gave a
rough and imperfect description of the now familiarly known calcified
Trichina capsules, I give a translation of it (Froriep’s ‘Notizen,’
1822, Bd. i, s. 64):--“At a post-mortem examination of a man who had
been a great brandy-drinker, and who died from thoracic dropsy after
several severe attacks of gout, Tiedemann found white stony concretions
in most of the muscles, especially at the extremities. They lay in the
cellular tissue between the fibre-bundles, frequently also attached to
(or near) the walls of the arteries, being from two to four lines long,
and roundish. The chemical examination conducted by Gmelin yielded
seventy-three parts phosphate of lime, seven parts carbonate of lime and
twenty parts animal matter, resembling albumen or fibrin.” In regard
to this notice Dr Pagenstecher (‘Die Trichinen,’ s. 4) has remarked
that Tiedemann’s “communication was also referred by Henle to such a
parasitic development when he subsequently found Trichina; and in this
sense it was afterwards received by Diesing, Küchenmeister, and Davaine.
But it has been rejected by Leuckart on account of the size (from two
to four lines) and seat of the concretions. True, it has never yet been
observed that the capsuled Trichina (not measuring a tenth part of that
diameter) subsequently constituted centres of gouty deposit exceeding
their own bulk, nor is it likely that they should. Seeing, however,
as we often do, that errors respecting size have crept into works on
Trichina, we shall not need to lay much stress upon these statements;
still less so since the notice is very superficial, and its character is
essentially of a physiologico-chemical nature. But this, at least, seems
to us decisive, that when Bischoff, at Heidelberg, wrote on a case which
occurred in Heidelberg, not one single word was mentioned respecting
a former case, if such should have happened, although Tiedemann and
himself were on terms of close intimacy.” So much for Tiedemann. In
regard to Klencke’s claims, the same observer writes:--“Klencke has
asserted that he had already drawn Trichinæ in the year 1829, and that
he had seen them again in 1831. This subsequent statement has no kind of
confirmation. The unreliableness, mistakes, and self-deceptions in the
helminthological writings of Klencke have been repeatedly exposed some
twenty years ago.” Prior to this criticism by Pagenstecher, Professor
von Siebold and several other well-known helminthologists had already
commented on Klencke’s assertions in the same destructive manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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