HELMINTHOLOGY.

447

Helminthology, made up to the present time. (Lehrbuchder Physiologic des Menschen. Bd. ii, 1844, p. 833.)

But as novel ideas are always prone to excite too greatenthusiasm, and when nourished too luxuriantly to branchout into monstrous excrescences, thus it has unfortunatelyhappened in the present instance. Klencke, desirous ofreaping at one swoop the entire harvest of this as yet butlittle cultivated field, has come forth with an astoundingarray of facts, from which it would be made to appear thatthe origin of Entozoa was dependent upon the active orpassive migration of their ova. (Klencke, Untersuchungenund Erfahrungen im Gebiete der Anatomie, Physiologie ,Mikrologie, und wissenschaftlichen Medizin. Bd. i, Mikrosk.pathologis. Beobachtungen fiber die Natur des Kontagiums,p. 144.) At the same time, however, he has not deniedthat many parasitic animals are produced de novo, morbidfermentative processes producing abnormal corpuscular cellswhich become individualized as animals (ib. p. 148). In alarger work (Ueber die Kontagiositat d. Eingeweidewfirmer,1844) Klencke sets himself to inquire in what relation theEntozoa stand with respect to the morbid phenomena of theorganism infested by them. This work swarms with mani-fest errors, to which the Reporter will hereafter refer, and itis difficult to conceive how any one could possibly allowhimself to be deluded to such an extent as is here apparent.It is to be hoped that these are the last of Klencke’s researches,for his in every respect worthless experiments are calculatedultimately to awaken mistrust in the results which havebeen obtained by other naturalists from researches carriedon with the greatest conscientiousness and care. That theReporter is by no means unjust, in thus totally rejectingKlenckc’s experiments on the contagiousness of Entozoa,will be at once seen upon reference not only to his annualReport (Jahresbericht fiber die Fortschritte der gesammtenMedizin in alien Landern, im Jahre 1844, herausg. v.Canstatt und Eisenmann, Bd. iv; Bericht fiber Entozoen,Epizoen, Ento-und Epiphyten, von Canstatt und Siebold,