History of Discovery
Gongylonema pulchrum was first named and presented with its own species by Molin in 1857. The first reported case was in 1850 by Dr. Joseph Leidy, when he identified a worm "obtained from the mouth of a child" from the Philadelphia Academy. He originally described it as Filariae hominis oris, and initially considered the worm was a guinea worm (dracunculiasis medeninsis), but because of the unique location of the worm (buccal cavity), and the relatively short size compared to the guinea worm, the hypothesis was disregarded. There have only been around 50 reported human cases of G. pulchrum world wide since 1864, and these infections have been widespread and globally ubiquitous. G. pulchrum infections have been notoriously and historically hard to diagnose due to symptom complaints by patients- this will be touched on later. Also, morphological diagnosis of the parasite is also somewhat complicated because of the variable size of adult worms, and the tendency of the worm to be different lengths depending on what host the worm is recovered from. This will also be discussed in the morphology section.
Read more about this topic: Gongylonema Pulchrum
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or discovery:
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son’s future are counting on me.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)