The Animal Parasites of ManFantham, Harold Benjamin
Science
The Animal Parasites of Man
Fantham, Harold Benjamin
Medical parasitology
As the liver fluke feeds on blood it is possible that it also reaches,
particularly when young, the circulatory system, and cases have been
known in which it has been carried by the blood into organs far
from its original situation. Such cases also have been repeatedly
observed in men. Probably the parasite described by Treutler, 1793, as
_Hexathyridium venarum_, which protruded from the ruptured anterior
tibial vein of a man, was a young liver fluke. A few adult specimens
were found by Duval in the portal and other veins _post mortem_ at
Rennes (1842) in a man, aged 49, and a similar statement is reported
by Vital from Constantine (1874). Giesker, in 1850, found two hepatic
flukes in a swelling on the sole of the foot of a woman. Penn Harris
states that he observed six specimens in Liverpool in a spontaneously
ruptured abscess of the occiput of a two months old infant. Another
case which, like the previous one, is reported by Lankester,[271]
relates to a sailor who suffered from an abscess behind the ear, and
from which a liver fluke was expelled. Finally, Dionis de Carrières
reports the case of a man, aged 35, in whose right hypochondriac region
a tumour the size of a pigeon’s egg had formed, and from which a young
liver fluke was extracted.
[271] In the English translation of Küchenmeister’s work on
Parasitology (London, 1857). The specimen is preserved in the Hunterian
Museum, London, and is an adult liver fluke, measuring 18 mm. in length
and 7 mm. in breadth.
From such records it is not impossible that _Distomum oculi humani_,
Ammon, 1833, as well as _Monostomum lentis_, v. Nordm., 1832, may
have been very young hepatic flukes that had strayed. Ammon found
four specimens (length 0·5 to 1 mm.) of his species (named _Distomum
ophthalmobium_ by Diesing in 1850) between the opaque lens and the
capsule of a five months old child in Dresden, and von Nordmann
discovered his _Monostomum lentis_ to the number of eight specimens
(only 0·3 mm. in length) in the opaque lens of an old woman. Minute
white bodies which Greef found in the cortex of the lens of a
fisherman, aged 55, removed on account of cataract, were with some
reserve regarded as Trematode larvæ. The fact that Ammon found that
the intestinal cæca of the worm discovered by him had no lateral
branches does not negative the above opinion, as in the liver fluke
the intestinal cæca are originally unbranched, and according to Lutz
they only develop lateral ramifications later, between the twelfth and
twenty-second day of infection (fig. 144).
*Fasciola gigantica*, Cobbold, 1856.
Syn.: _Distomum giganteum_, Diesing, 1858; _Fasciola gigantea_,
Cobbold, 1858; _Cladocœlium giganteum_, Stoss., 1892; _Fasciola
hepatica_ var. _angusta_, Raill., 1895; _Fasciola hepatica_ var.
_ægyptiaca_, Looss, 1896.
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