Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1879 — Throat Parasites. [ARTICLE]

Throat Parasites.

The Elmira (N.Y.) Advertiser gives a strange account of a little girl afflicted with the diphtheria. In looking into the child’s throat, the mother saw a micrococcus moving, which she removed, together with another, which are now on exhibition in a city drug store, and being discussed by the medical fraternity. They are easily seen by the naked eye, though a glass helps one to the “true inwardness” of the critters. The largest one is fully one-quar-ter of an inch long, covered with hair, with a head something like a caterpillar, tapering body, and long, hairy tail. Its body is formed in rings; its color is about that of one of those dark yellow “thousand-legged” worms found under old boards and stones. The smaller one is about one-sixteenth of an inch long, being whitish in color, and requiring the glass to bring out its “beauty” of conformation. It is not a pleasant thought to imagine such things in your throat, but they get there, and from there into the blood, heart and other organs, producing paralysis and sudden death when least expected. They are vegetable parasites, and exist in large colonies in the diphtheretic membrane.