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
Into the anatomy of the adult Dracunculus I do not enter, but I may
remark in passing, that the structure of the worm has been exhaustively
treated of by Busk and Bastian. A _résumé_ of their views is given in
my introductory treatise. Carter and Leuckart have also added important
details. As regards the structure and development of the young
worms, I have to observe that the discovery of the viviparous mode of
reproduction in Dracunculus is due to Jacobson. Nearly a quarter of a
century ago I recognised the fact that the uterine organs of the adult
worm almost completely filled up the perivisceral cavity, and that
they were crowded with microscopic worms. Referring to this “find,”
the late Sir George Ballingall, of Edinburgh, in his well-known work
on ‘Military Surgery,’ recorded the circumstance in the following
terms:--“The Assistant Conservator of the Anatomical Museum in our
University has detected _in the oviduct_ of an adult specimen from
my collection myriads of minute and perfectly-developed (embryonic)
Dracunculi. They can be very well seen with an half-inch object-glass,
but their structure is best exhibited if the magnifying power be
increased to two hundred and fifty diameters linear.” As already stated
in my introductory treatise, these observations were made during the
winter of 1853-54. In July, 1854, M. Robin made a similar statement
after examining a fresh _Dracunculus_ which had been extracted from the
leg of a man by M. Malgaigne. Robin, not unsuitably, compared the worm
to a double tube, one tubular sheath, as it were, enclosing the other.
“The second tube,” he distinctly affirms, “_is the oviduct, or, rather,
that part which represents the uterus_. The young still remaining in
the uterus were nearly all coiled, sometimes with the tail sallying
outwards, at others rolled like the rest of the body.” I have thought
it only due to Robin and myself to show that from the first we were
perfectly well acquainted with the fact of the “great development of the
genital tube and of its close adherence to the parietes of the body.”
To be sure, many discrepancies occurred in our writings, and in those
of Busk and Carter. It was Bastian’s skill and good fortune to correct
these errors. Thus, most of us agreed in recognising a slightly trilobed
or tripapillated mouth; but Carter failed to demonstrate the existence
of these tubercles, and spoke of the oral aperture as being simple and
“punctiform.” The body throughout its three upper fourths appeared to me
to be cylindrical, but Robin found that it was flattened. It is finely
striated transversely, except at the part where it contracts to form
the slender, pointed tail. According to Carter, Robin, and Davaine, the
young attain a length of about 1/33 of an inch, but Bastian gives it as
about 1/42″. In thickness, Carter gives the approximative diameter as
1/633″, Robin makes it 1/990″ to 1/1320″, whilst Bastian gives their
breadth at 1/1428″, and Davaine at 1/2500″.
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