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
The original name of _Trichuris_, given to this worm by Buttner, could
not, of course, be allowed to stand when it became evident that the
so-called tail was in reality the head and neck. The _Trichocephalus_ is
not uncommon in England and Ireland. It is less frequent in Scotland.
On the continent, however, it is so abundant that M. Davaine calculates
that not less than one half of the inhabitants of Paris are infested
by it. From what Dujardin has said it can be scarcely less abundant
in Northern France, for M. Duval, the distinguished director of the
Rennes School of Medicine, supplied that helminthologist with numerous
specimens on various occasions. The worm abounds in Italy and Egypt;
being scarcely less prevalent in the United States. The lamented Mr
Noel, one of my old pupils at the Middlesex Hospital College, brought
me specimens which he found post-mortem on three or four occasions.
Dr Haldane, of Edinburgh, once or twice obtained large numbers
(post-mortem). In Ireland, Bellingham found the worm in eighty-one out
of ninety post-mortem examinations. Mr Cooper, of Greenwich, met with
it, post-mortem, in eleven out of sixteen instances. When treating
patients for tapeworm I have repeatedly expelled the whipworm.
The organisation of _Trichocephalus dispar_ has been investigated
by Dujardin, Mayer, Von Siebold, Eberth, Bastian, and others. Prof.
Erasmus Wilson and myself have carefully studied the anatomy of the
closely-allied whipworm of ruminants (_T. affinis_) which is discussed
in my ‘Entozoa.’
The statement of Küchenmeister that there are no external appendages
in the female _Trichocephalus_ comparable to those known to exist in
the allied _Trichosomata_, is incorrect. Leuckart’s, and especially
Virchow’s, researches disproved Küchenmeister’s and Meissner’s notion
that _Trichinæ_ were the young of _Trichocephalus_. The experiments of
Davaine render it probable that the young get into the human body in
a direct manner. He finds that the eggs undergo no development whilst
yet lodged within the host’s intestines. The eggs are expelled per
anum in the immature condition in which they first escape from the body
of the parent worm. It further appears that, after their expulsion, a
period of six months must elapse before embryonic formation commences.
The fully-developed embryo measures 1/333″ in length, and resembles the
parent to a certain extent.
Whipworms rarely put their bearers to inconvenience; nevertheless, both
human and animal hosts occasionally suffer from their presence. Thus,
Felix Pascal quotes a remarkable and fatal instance of cerebral symptoms
from this cause in a girl of four years of age; and Mr Gibson has
recorded an instance in which these worms produced paralysis and loss
of speech. According to Professor Axe, sheep suffer severely from the
allied species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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