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:
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)