Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1886 — Trichinae. [ARTICLE]

Trichinae.

The trichinae is a species of threadlike worm, and'was first discovered by Professor Tiedmaun in 1822. When mature the male is one-eighteenth of an inch long, the female at least twice that length. The eggs about one twelve* hundretli of an inch in diameter. After fertilization and six or eight days of gestation, they are developed into embryos, which, when extended within the intestines of an animal, commence at once their migrations. The hog is especially liable to trichina), but it has been found in horses, dogs, sheep, birds, cattle, and ells. After uncooked flesh has been eaten, containing the undeveloped trichime, the worms remain in the intestines, and by the second day become fully developed and freed from their capsules. By the tenth day they find their way through the connective tissues and by the blood into the voluntary * muscles, and the fourteenth day finds them eneapsuled throughout the muscles. As many as 10,000 or 15,000 have been found in a cubic inch of hog flesh. Professor Dalton estimates the number of trichinae in a human body to be 85,000, and that roir 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 may exist in a single human body, according to examinations made in several cases. The. most startling case was at Hettstadt, Prussia, in 1863. Out of 103 persons who were dining at a nobleman’s house and hall eaten sausages, smoked and warmed, but not cooked, twentydied almost immediately and eighty • were ill for many weeks. The sausages that were left were swarming with trichina), and the muscles of the victims were found to be alive with them. The first case recorded in America was discovered by Dr. Scheutter v of this city, in 1864. In 1*865-66, a committee of physicians was appointed in Chicago to examine the hogs. The result of the examination showed that out of 1,000 hogs, one in fifty had trichinae. A year before at Brunswick, .Germany, a similar examination showed that about one ■in 10,000 hogs had the diaease. In 1878 from ten to twenty per cent, of American hams contained trichina), and in the same year out of 2,500 Westphalia hams only one contained the worm.— New York Star.