ENTOZOA

(Gr. svrof, and Xucv, an animal.) A name given to an extensive series of low-organized invertebrate and generally vermiform animals, of whieh the greater part are parasitic on the internal, organs of other animals. They have colourle blood, circulated in the higher organized species in a closed system of ve els, without an auricle or ventricle; they have no respiratory organs, no articulated members for locomotion, no organs of sense. The digestive system consists either of tubes or cavities excavated in the parenchymatous texture of the body, and without an anal outlet; or of a tube with both oral and anal orifices freely suspended in an abdominal cavity. A filamentary nervous system has been recognized in the higher organized En., tozoa, occasionally complicated with a ganglion near the mouth; the generative system is unisexual, hermaphrodite, or dioecious. (For the cla ification of the Entozoa, see Intestinal i a.) The species of Entozoa known to infest the human body are the following: — Ascaris vermicular is, Ascaris lumbricoides, Tricocephaius dis.par, Bothriocephalus lat us. Taenia solium, in the alimentary canal; Distotna hepalicum, in the gall-bladder; A cep halo cyst is endogen a, Echinococcus hominis, in the substance of the liver, in the omentum and cavity of the abdomen; Filaria bronchial is, in the bronchial glands; Strongyl us gigas, in the kidney; Spiroptera hominis and Strongyl us spiniger, in the urinary bladder; Poly stoma pinguicola, in the ovarium; Trichina spiral is, in the voluntary muscles; Cysticercus celluloses, Filaria medincw5«s and Filaria oculi, in the cellular ti ue. [s. 416]