Trichinopoly

“ As long as the weather is warm the barbet never ceases. The climate of Trichinopoly is hot during the winter months, and hotter during the rest of the year, and the coppersmith is in full song all the year round. ”

“ There is a similar kind of oubliette at Trichinopoly in the form of a cleft of considerable depth in the living rock. No one who was lowered into the cleft could get out without assistance. It is terrible to think of the deeds done in those days by men who knew no pity. ”

“ In the middle of the sixteenth century Trichinopoly was deserted, and the fertile land of the Cauvery Valley was overgrown with jungle.
Various causes contribute to the desertion of cities in the East. One is epidemic disease, such as plague or cholera, which even the skill of modern science cannot control or subdue. It sweeps down upon a place, sparing neither palace nor hovel. The terrified people appeal to their gods with bloodshed and beat of drum. ”

“ Tobacco is grown chiefly in the neighbourhood of Dindigul, whence it is exported to Trichinopoly, to be made into cigars. There are several cigar factories and a number of saltpetre refineries. The only other large industry is that of coffee-cleaning. Madura is traversed by the main line of the South Indian railway. ”

“ Now and then it will commit depredations in some poultry-yard; and I have often known them taken in traps baited with a Pigeon or a Chicken. In the south of India it is very often tamed, and becomes quite domestic, and even affectionate in its manners. One I saw, many years ago, at Trichinopoly, went about quite at large, and late every night used to work itself under the pillow of its owner, roll itself up into a ball, with its tail curled round its body, and sleep till a late hour of the day. It hunted for Rats, Shrews, and House Lizards. Their activity in climbing is very great ”

“ The chief interest of this genus is that, at any rate in T. crassicauda Bel., which infests the rat, the dwarf males live two, three, or four at a time within the uterus of the female, a condition of things which recalls the similar arrangement found in the Gephyrean Bonellia.
Trichina spiralis is the cause of the well-known disease trichinosis, which appears in two forms, intestinal and muscular, according to the habitat of the parasite. The mature forms of {146}both sexes are found in the intestine of man and many other mammals. ”

“ My own estimate, calculated from specimens of muscle obtained from the same case, gave 100,000,000 as the approximate number of worms present. In the only outbreak of Trichinosis occurring in England, details of which will be given further on, I found that the flesh of the hog that had caused the local endemic contained upwards of 80,000 Trichinæ to the ounce. The consumption of a pound of such flesh would be capable of producing a collective progeny of something like 400,000,000 within the human “bearer.” ”

“ Such infested muscle or flesh is said to be "trichinosed," and the flesh of a trichinosed human subject has been estimated to contain 100,000,000 encysted worms. To complete the development of the encysted and sexless Trichinæ the infested flesh of the host must be eaten by another animal in which the worm can live, e.g. the flesh of man by a pig or rat, and that of a pig by man. In such a case the cysts are dissolved by the digestive juices, the worms escape, develop reproductive organs and produce young, which then migrate into the muscles and induce trichinosis as before. ”

“ But it has not been found that this microscopic examination serves as an effective check; indeed it is apt to create a false feeling of security. Over 32% of the German cases of trichinosis between 1881 and 1898 were traced to meat so inspected and passed as free from trichinae. In America accordingly microscopic examination is not considered to give any guarantee of soundness from trichinae, in spite of a government mark “inspected and passed” (see B. H. Ransom, Circular 108 of U.S. Dep. of Agriculture, 1907) . ”

“ I had myself examined the trichinised flesh taken from a dozen of these corpses, but in no instance had the faintest suspicion of trichinosis been entertained during life. The circumstances attending the only outbreak of trichiniasis that has been witnessed in England are very interesting. In the month of April, 1871, I received from Dr W. L. Dickinson, of Workington, Cumberland, specimens of pork which he requested me to examine; and in complying with his request I confirmed his opinion that the diseased meat was infested with Trichinæ. ”

“ T. nodosus in mouse; T. alcocki in the thamin (India) ; T. globulosa in camel; T. giraffæ in giraffe.
Sub-family. Trichinellinæ, Ransom, 1911.
Male without spicule; females ovoviviparous. Larvæ penetrate muscles of host and become encysted. Genus: Trichinella.
Genus. Trichinella, Railliet, 1895.
Syn.: Trichina, Owen, 1835 (nec Meigen, 1830) .
Very small Trichinellinæ, the males of which have two conical appendages at the caudal extremity; the vulva is situated at the border of the anterior fifth of the body. There is only one species.
Trichinella spiralis, Owen, 1835. ”

“ The males after a time leave the body with the excreta and perish, whilst the larvae of the new brood make their way into the tissues of the host.
Man usually acquires trichinosis by eating uncooked or improperly-cooked pork, and the disease is so widely spread and of such a serious nature that most civilised countries have adopted rigorous methods for the detection of trichinised meat. ”

“ Take, for instance, the trichina spiralis, a minute worm discovered in 1835 encysted in countless numbers in the muscles of the human body; it was studied by Virchow, Leuckart, and others, by feeding-experiments on animals, and was proved to come from infected 245 half-cooked ham and pork, and to make its way from the alimentary canal all over the body. The name of trichiniasis or trichina-fever was given to the acute illness that came of the sudden dissemination of these myriad parasites into the tissues. Trichiniasis had killed hundreds of people by a most painful death ”

“ Cases of trichinosis have been known to occur in nearly all the countries of Europe; further, in Egypt, Algeria, East Africa, Syria, India, Australia, and America. North Germany, more especially the Saxe-Thüringian states, is the classical land for epidemics of trichinosis; the mortality varies, but it may be very high.306
Prophylaxis.—The grave nature of the disease and the comparatively high mortality relating to trichinosis led the authorities to adopt certain preventive measures, which are the more necessary as national customs cannot be altered in a short time. ”

“ The incessant din produced by their thousand voices, and the screaming notes they emit, when a flock of either species simultaneously leave the trees for some other part of the forest, baffles all description, and must be seen and heard to be fully comprehended. So intent are the Trichoglossi for some time after sunrise upon extracting their honey-food, that they are not easily alarmed or made to quit the trees upon which they are feeding. ”

“ Fig. 4.—Trichinella encysted among muscular fibres. (After Leuckart.) characteristic of Trichocephalus affinis, Oxyuris ambigua and other species. (2) The life-history of Ollulanus tricuspis is an example of the second class. Ollulanus tricuspis is found in the adult state in the alimentary canal of the cat; the young worms are hatched in the alimentary canal, and often wander into the body of their host and become encysted in the lungs, liver and other organs; during the encystment the worm degenerates and loses all trace of structure. ”

“ It needed nought else to enable the explorers to identify the creature.
“Triceratops!” gasped Garth and the baronet in a breath.
“Triceratops!” repeated Mervyn triumphantly; “one of the first inhabitants of the globe! It seems too good to be true. That it has been permitted for us to discover the monster here, in these wilds, when the whole species was thought to be extinct eras ago, is a slice of luck which we cannot too highly appreciate.”
“What a monstrous brute!” Seymour exclaimed. ”

“ Trichina spiralis is the juvenile state of a little round worm, previously unknown, to which the generic title of Trichina must remain attached. (2) The sexually mature Trichina inhabits the intestinal canal of numerous warm-blooded animals, especially mammalia (also of man) , and constantly in great numbers. The duration of its life extends from four to five weeks. (3) At the second day after their introduction the intestinal Trichinæ attain their full sexual maturity. ”

“ To place matters beyond all doubt much remains to be done; yet that which has been accomplished is, or ought to be, of surpassing interest alike to the physician, the scientific pathologist, the epidemiologist, and the philosophic naturalist. In the case of Trichina, Owen’s nomenclature was most properly allowed to stand; but for reasons stated below I have not hesitated to employ for this worm, in its adult state, a name differing from that originally given to the hæmatozoon which turns out to be its representative larval state. ”

“ Tiedemann (1822) , Peacock (1828) described “little bodies” in the muscles of human cadavers which Hilton (1832) considered to be parasitic in nature. Paget (1835) showed that these bodies were round worms and Owen (1835) described them more accurately and gave the name Trichina spiralis to them. Leidy (1846) found organisms in the muscles of hogs which he considered to be the same as Owen’s Trichina and paved the way for the work of Zenker (1860) in showing the pathological relation between the Trichina of pork and human Trichinosis. ”

“ The Trichina (Fig. 25) lives in its immature condition in a sac. These sac-like bodies are found in the pig, the meat of which, if not sufficiently cooked when eaten, will cause this very fatal disease, as the sac being destroyed by the juices of the intestine, the young Trichina is set free, and deposits eggs, the embryos from which bore through the viscera of the unfortunate one. The Trichina belongs to the family of thread-worms or Nematoda. ”

“ Nor was the full story of the trichina made out for a long time after Owen's discovery. It was not till 1847 that the American anatomist Dr. Joseph Leidy found the cysts of trichina in the tissues of pork; and another decade or so elapsed after that before German workers, chief among whom were Leuckart, Virchow, and Zenker, proved that the parasite gets into the human system through ingestion of infected pork, and that it causes a definite set of symptoms of disease which hitherto had been mistaken for rheumatism, typhoid fever, and other maladies. ”

“ Perhaps the worst form of dis-ease contamination from fresh flesh food is that of trichinosis. Trichinae are worm-like creatures which have the first stage of their growth in the flesh of swine, and then become encased in a cyst or egg-like structure, which, when taken into the human digestive organs are revived, and the trichinae then bore their way through [260] the walls of the digestive organs, completing their growth in the human muscle-tissue. Trichinosis is one of the most fatal of diseases, but fortunately is not common. ”

“ Henceforth he continued to make important contributions to every department of comparative anatomy and zoology for a period of over fifty years. In the sponges Owen was the first to describe the now well-known " Venus's flower basket " or Euplectella (1841, 1857) . Among Entozoa his most noteworthy discovery was that of Trichina spiralis (1835) , the parasite infesting the muscles of man in the disease now termed trichinosis (see also, however, the article on Paget, Sir James) . ”

“ Muscular trichinosis is unknown in fishes, but the sexual form develops in their intestine.
The adult parasites of the intestine are scarcely visible to the naked eye; the females are 3 to 4 mm. long and more numerous than the males, which measure 1.4 to 1.6 mm. The eggs are very numerous, a single female containing at one time 1200, and probably producing ten times as many during her life. ”

“ Clearly, if the bird’s intestinal canal were a proper territory for the residence of sexually mature Trichinæ, we should have found abundance of wandering non-encapsuled flesh-worms and also sexually-immature muscle-Trichinæ enclosed in well-formed capsules. Not a few persons still entertain the notion that Trichinæ are liable to infest all kinds of warm-blooded, and even also many kinds of cold-blooded animals, such as reptiles and fishes. ”

“ For instance, some species of Trigonia, a great genus of shells in the secondary formations, survive in the Australian seas; and a few members of the great and almost extinct group of Ganoid fishes still inhabit our fresh waters. Therefore, the utter extinction of a group is generally, as we have seen, a slower process than its production. ”

“ In the same way calcareous infiltration sometimes occurs, but only when the parasites have lost their vitality. This calcareous degeneration consists in the deposit of carbonate and phosphate of lime in the walls of the cyst; it never begins before the seventh or eighth month after infestation, and is sometimes much longer delayed.
No man or animal ever becomes infested except by the ingestion of meat or drink containing larval trichinæ. The pig and small rodents are most frequently attacked. Man contracts trichinosis by eating insufficiently cooked infected pork. ”