Medical Officers of the Army of India .
for of seeing the actual parasites which produced the eggs, and of whose
exact nature I could only give a guess, as none of them could ever be
found in the animal's dejecta. As a matter of convenience, the animal was
destroyed, and the examination made, at the mule lines, as I could then have
the assistance of the transport conductor, and of the salutri, who were necessarily
more accustomed than I to dissecting such huge subjects. While walking
to the spot with Mr. J. Brown, the transport conductor, I explained to him
what I expected to find, and to my surprise he replied, " I know you will find
exactly what you expect then, Sir, for I have found worms of the sort you men-
tion, sometimes absolutely in buckets-full, in all the cases we have lost here, and
we have had some 60 either died or destroyed; but I was only laughed at when
I said I thought they were the cause of death :" and he added that it was in the
stomach and large intestine that they would be found. On opening the animal's
cœcum a most extraordinary sight presented itself. There was absolutely no
exaggeration in the conductor's statement, for so enormous were the numbers of
worms that the whole of the intestinal contents seemed nothing else than
a writhing mass; and I believe that, could they have all been collected
and cleaned, they would have more than filled an ordinary stable bucket.
It will be best, however, to give a full account of this case, as it is typical
of all the rest, and so will save the necessity of entering much into detail
in the others. The animal had been ailing for some three months, the prin-
cipal symptom being wasting. It was said to have had " fever" on several
occasions, but the temperature had not been taken by the thermometer.
It fed greedily as a rule ; but the appetite was capricious, and occasionally
it would be off its feed for days. The most prominent symptoms at the time it
came under my observation have already been described : for the rest, its organs
seemed healthy, the sounds of the lungs and heart presenting nothing peculiar.
I examined the blood on three several occasions, and could Find no trace of the
so-called " Surra" parasites (Trichomonas Evans) in the blood, though this does
not imply their necessary absence throughout the case, as their presence is ac-
knowledged to be intermittent. On opening the abdomen, the peritoneal cavity
was first carefully examined, and found to be healthy, with the exception that
three specimens of Filaria papillosa Rudolphi were discovered; but there was
not the faintest sign of irritation about the situations where they were found. The
cœcum was then opened, and the upper half of the large intestine were found to
contain immense numbers of worms. Putting aside Oxyuris curvula Rudolphi,
of which a few were present, they might be divided into two categories, although
a close search would always show large numbers of intermediate size. The
first or larger sort were about three-fourths of an inch long, greyish red in
colour, or with a distinct black streak throughout their length, owing to their
being gorged with blood. The largest specimens (female) have a mucronate tail,
1 Afterwards identified as a distinct species S. robustunz sp. n .
3
B 2