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Three doctors and an accoucheur were present, and when they claimed that the fetal head presented the husband gave up in despair; but the supposed fetus was born shortly after, and proved to be only a mass of hydatids, with not the sign of a true pregnancy. Girard of Lyons speaks of a female who had been pregnant several times, but again experienced the signs of pregnancy.

The liver is by far the most common site of hydatid cysts in the human subject. With regard to the further life-history of hydatids, the living elements of the cyst may die and degenerate, or the cyst may increase in size until it ruptures. As a result of pyogenic infection the cyst may be converted into an abscess.

This thrill is not often obtainable, and in any case is not pathognomonic of hydatids, as it may be elicited in ascites and in other abdominal cysts. Pressure of the cyst upon adjacent structures, and the occurrence of suppuration, are attended with characteristic clinical features. The diagnosis of hydatids will be considered with the individual organs.

I have seen foolish fellows, who were parched with a long tramp, drink water in quantity in which living organisms could be seen with the naked eye, without taking even the ordinary precaution of straining it through a piece of linen. If they contracted hydatids, typhoid fever, or other ailments, which thin our mining camps of the strong, lusty, careless youths, who could wonder?

People who live about town, and keep a dog to give the children hydatids and to keep the neighbours awake at night, imagine that the animal is fulfilling his destiny. All town dogs, fancy dogs, show dogs, lap-dogs, and other dogs with no work to do, should be abolished; it is only in the country that a dog has any justification for his existence.

Evidence of pregnancy may also be afforded by the discharge from the uterus of an early ovum, of moles, hydatids, etc. Disease of the uterus and ovarian dropsy may be mistaken for pregnancy. Careful examination is necessary to determine the nature of the condition present.

Lawson Tait has incised the liver to the extent of three inches, evacuated two gallons of hydatids, and obtained successful recovery in ten weeks. There are several cases of wound of the liver followed by recovery reported by surgeons of the United States Army. Whitehead mentions a man of twenty-two who on June 3, 1867, was shot in the liver by a slug from a pistol.

'You know, I daresay, that sheep occasionally become giddy hydatids in the head, 'tis called, in which their brains become eaten up, and the animal exhibits the strange peculiarity of walking round and round in a circle continually. I have travelled just in the same way round and round like a giddy ram.

The clinical features of hydatids vary so much with their situation and size, that they are best discussed with the individual organs. In general it may be said that there is a slow formation of a globular, elastic, fluctuating, painless swelling. Fluctuation is detected when the cyst approaches the surface, and it is then also that percussion may elicit the "hydatid thrill" or fremitus.

The obstruction from the bulk of this substance must have affected the brain, and probably induced the thickening of the pia mater, the hydatids, and the beginning of suppuration, whereas the dura mater, being of a harder texture, was not injured .”