Trichome

“ The female sexual cell is represented by the contents of a cell which is terminal on ordinary or specialized branches. This is the carpogonium; it consists of a ventral portion which contains a nucleus, but in which no oosphere is differentiated, and an elongated tubular portion known as the trichogyne, into which the cytoplasm extends. Fertilization is effected by the passive convection of a spermatium from the antheridium to the trichogyne, to which it adheres, and to which it passes over its nucleus through an open communication set up at the point of contact. ”

“ Peck, 44th Report, N. Y. State Mus., pp. 38–64, describes 46 species.
Figure 88.—Tricholoma personatum. Section (natural size) .
Tricholoma personatum Fr. Edible.—This plant occurs during the autumn and persists up to the winter months. It grows on the ground in open places and in woods. The stem is short, usually 3–7 cm. long × 1–2 cm. in thickness, and the cap is from 5–10 cm. or more broad. The entire plant often has a lilac or purple tint.
The pileus is convex, expanded, moist, smooth, grayish to brownish tinged with lilac or purple, especially when young, fading out in age. ”

“ The Imbricated Tricholoma. Cap reddish-brown, 3 inches broad, thick, fleshy, broadly convex, and then flattened, obtuse, dry, continuous at disc, but torn into scales and fibrillose toward the margin; flesh firm, white. Stem solid, stout, sometimes short, and conico-bulbous, 11⁄2 to 2 inches long, and as much as 1 inch thick, sometimes longer and almost equal; white at apex. Gills slightly emarginate, almost adnate, somewhat crowded, about 3 inches broad, wholly white when young, at length reddish. It grows either scattered or in groups. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the genus Tricholoma the volva and annulus are both wanting, the spores are white, and the gills are attached to the stem, but are more or less strongly notched or sinuate at the stem. Sometimes the notch is very slight. The stem is fleshy-fibrous, attached to the center of the pileus, and is usually short and stout. In some specimens when young there is a slight cobwebby veil which very soon disappears. The genus is a very large one. Some species are said to be poisonous and a few are known to be edible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no universal veil in this genus, only a partial one that forms a ring, or sometimes only indicating the ring by scales. The species usually grow on the ground.
TRICHOLOMA = from two Greek words, hair and fringe.
This genus is especially noted for its sinuate gills. They have a tooth next to the stem. All grow on the ground and are fleshy. There are sometimes fibrils which adhere to the margin of the cap, the remains of the veil. There are no plants in this genus that are considered poisonous.
46
CLITOCYBE = a declivity. ”

“ It is also known as the human trypanosomiasis of Brazil, South American trypanosomiasis, and Chagas’ disease.
Chagas88 reports two principal forms—acute and chronic. The acute infection is rare, and is characterized by increase in the volume of the thyroid gland, pyrexia, a sensation of crackling in the skin, enlarged lymphatic glands in the neck, axilla, etc., while the liver and spleen are increased in volume. Sclerosis of the thyroid gland is found at autopsy and fatty degeneration of the liver. During an attack of fever, trypanosomes are found in the blood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What greater dream of mass slaughter and destruction have they dreamed?"
"They want you," said Curt quietly, "because they believe we are not the only ones possessing the toxin. They need you to come back and help find the antitoxin for D. triconus."
Dell shook his head. "That's a blind hope. The action of D. triconus is like a match set to a powder train. The instant its molecules contact protoplasm, they start a chain reaction that rips apart the cell structure. It spreads like fire from one cell to the next, and nothing can stop it once it's started operating within a given organism." ”

“ This worm, if eaten by man with pork, develops with great rapidity within the human digestive system, and produces enormous numbers of young, which, boring their way through the tissues to the muscles of the patient, cause serious and often fatal illness. Once in the muscles, no further change ensues to the worms, which simply degenerate into mere specks of lime. It is this trichina which produces the disease known as trichinosis. Fatal epidemics of this disease are not uncommon on the continent, especially where the unsanitary practice of eating uncooked or dried sausages is greatly in vogue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was thus very strong circumstantial evidence in favour of fertilization, although the male nucleus was not traced. The further work of Baur, and that of Darbishire, Funfstuck and Lindau, have shown that in a number of other cases trichogynes are present. Thus ascogonia with trichogynes have been observed in Endocarpon, Collema, Pertusaria, Lecanora, Gyrophora, Parmelia, Ramalina, Physcia, Anaptychia and Cladonia. ”

“ Diagnosis in the presence of several cases, or in epidemics, is not difficult, but in isolated cases, on the other hand, it is not easy. If there is a suspicion of trichinosis, from the muscular fatigue and the œdema of the eyelids, the diagnosis can be made by excision of a piece of muscle and by finding the Trichinæ in the tissue, taken with the results of the examination of the previously eaten sausage or meat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trichiniasis or trichinosis is a disease characterized by fever, muscular pains, an enormous increase in the eosinophil blood corpuscles, and other more or less well-defined symptoms; at the onset it is sometimes mistaken by physicians for typhoid fever. The responsible parasite is a roundworm (Trichinella spiralis, formerly known as Trichina) which is swallowed while in its encysted larval stage in raw or imperfectly cooked pork. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Encysted trichomonads were seen in a patient’s stools, in rabbits infected therefrom and in cultures. The culture medium used was bouillon acidified with about 0·05 per cent. acetic acid and the cultures were maintained at 30° C.
Trichomonads occur in the digestive tracts, for example, the cæca of rats and mice (fig. 422) . In man allied flagellates can occur in similar situations, as well as in other parts of the intestine.
Other trichomonad-like organisms have been recently described from the fæces of man, more particularly from cases of chronic dysentery in the tropics. ”

“ The stem, 10–11 mm. in diameter, bore fronds with an H-shaped vascular strand, small scale-leaves, and adventitious roots. The stele consists of a five-angled cylinder of scalariform tracheae surrounding an axial strand of parenchyma containing scattered tracheae of smaller diameter. This axial tissue extends as a narrow strip into each of the short and obtusely truncated arms (cf. fig. 311) . A striking feature is the production of a shoot in the axil of the foliage-leaves (fig. 310, D) , a manner of branching characteristic of Trichomanes (see page 365) . ”

“ The passage through the crithidial stage is characteristic of the salivary development, and the trypanosome forms just mentioned are derived from the crithidial types. The development in the salivary gland takes from two to five days before the forms are infective.
"9. The fly is never infective until the glands are invaded. Trypanosomes from the proventriculus when injected into a monkey never produce infection. Trypanosomes may be found in the salivary glands as early as the sixteenth day of the cycle. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ The larva of the tænia saginata is found in the muscular fibers and connective tissue of cattle and when ingested in man develops into the tænia saginata.
Trichinosis
There is a parasite known as trichina spiralis which is found as a minute spiral worm in the muscular fibers of pork. It is visible to the naked eye as white specks. The ingestion of this parasite into a person with subluxations, causing interference with transmission of mental impulses, produces a condition which is called trichinosis. It is an acute condition and the symptoms resemble typhoid fever. It often results fatally. ”

“ Trichinosis, or the disease induced by the introduction of trichinæ into the intestinal canal and the migration thence into the voluntary muscles, varies in symptoms and gravity with the number, condition, and position of the parasites and the susceptibility of the patient. The presence of trichinæ in the alimentary canal, though often accompanied by violent symptoms, is comparatively free from danger, whereas in the muscular [p. 958] system they not only produce the greatest suffering, but often the most disastrous results. ”

“ Trichuris trichiura usually lives in the cæcum of man, and is also occasionally found in the vermiform appendix and in the colon, exceptionally also in the small intestine; usually only a few specimens are present, and these do not cause any particular disturbance, although, as Askanazy found, they feed on blood; in other cases cerebral symptoms of more or less severity are observed when Trichocephali are present in large numbers. At post-mortems performed soon after death the filiform anterior extremity of the worm is frequently found embedded in the mucous membrane (Askanazy) . ”