On poisoning by diseased pork : being an essay on trichinosis, or flesh-worm disease, its prevention and cure / by Julius Althaus.

  • Julius Althaus
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On poisoning by diseased pork : being an essay on trichinosis, or flesh-worm disease, its prevention and cure / by Julius Althaus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    only ova, but also living progeny, wliicli first become cysticerci, and afterwards are again metamorphosed into tseniaj. These facts, which went far to render the theory of spontaneous gener- ation untenable, soon led zoologists to inquire whether or not similar processes might take place with regard to trichina. Virchow was the first who succeeded in showing, by experiments, the existence of alternate generation in trichina. He fed a dog with encysted, but still Kving, trichinse, taken from a man, and found, four days afterwards, numerous free trichinae in the intes- tines of the dog. These animals were seen to possess generative organs, containing ova and spermatozoa. He also showed that the cyst in wliich the animals are enclosed, when found in mus- cles, is nothing but a changed muscular fibre ; and it thus became evident that the animals did indeed penetrate from without into the structural elements of muscles. These and other experi- ments of Virchow, which were confirmed by those of Leuckart, Claus, and others, have led to the conclusion, that there exists alternate generation for tricliina as it does for cysticercus ; that if animals are fed with ti'ichinse taken from the muscles, intestinal trichinae are formed, which produce ova and living progeny; that these latter, without leaving the animal in which they have been generated, immediately penetrate the coats of the intestines and migrate into the body, more especially into the striated muscles, where, unless the animal in which they are contained should pre- viously die, they are, after a time, encysted, and wait for the moment when they may be eaten by another man or animal, to imdergo the same changes as before. It thus appears, that the danger which may accrue to man from trichina is far greater than that with which he is threat- ened by cysticercus and taenia. While the latter require to be eaten on two several occasions, the former only requires to be eaten once in order to produce a progeny wliich infects the whole system. Moreover, cysticercus and taenia scarcely ever cause a fatal result, while even within the last thi'ee years a large number of deaths is known to have been brought about by trichina). A knowledge of the nature of the worm, of the symptoms of trichina disease, of the way in which this is brought about, and of the means by which we may hoj)e to prevent or cure it, is, therefore, of considerable importance for the Medical Practitioner.
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