The Animal Parasites of ManFantham, Harold Benjamin
Science
The Animal Parasites of Man
Fantham, Harold Benjamin
Medical parasitology
L. Pfeiffer’s statements (1891) on the part that certain coccidia or
their sporozoites played, or seemed to play, as causes of disease
gave a renewed impetus to the investigation of the coccidia. The
ingestion of even very numerous spores did not appear to account for
the mass infection so frequently observed, even after Balbiani had
confirmed the fact that there were two, and not one, sporozoites
contained in every spore of the coccidia of rabbits (fig. 72). The
hypothesis was therefore advanced that the sporozoites or young
coccidia were able to divide once again by sporulating. The question
was finally solved quite differently. R. Pfeiffer (1892) first
confirmed the fact that in addition to the well-known method of
sporulation in the coccidia of the rabbit that causes the infection
of fresh hosts (“exogenous sporulation”), an enormous increase may
follow in the already infected host in a manner that Eimer first
observed in the coccidia of the intestine of the mouse (“endogenous
sporulation”). It had hitherto been believed that some of the
species of coccidia increased like the rabbit parasite, then known
as _Coccidium oviforme_, and others like _Eimeria falciformis_, and
this difference had been made the foundation of a classification. R.
Pfeiffer was successful in observing the occurrence of both kinds
of development in the same species, and expressed the opinion that
endogenous sporulation (fig. 73), which takes place within the host,
was the cause of the mass-infection that is mostly accompanied by
serious consequences (fig. 74). L. Pfeiffer sought, especially, to
demonstrate the correctness of this view as regards other species of
coccidia and for this purpose he utilized the experiences already
published. Coccidia were known to exist in a number of different
hosts, and to propagate in some according to the _Coccidium_ type,
in others according to the _Eimeria_ type. It therefore was reasoned
that in this case it was not a question of two species belonging
to different genera living side by side, with a different mode of
development, but of one species, in the life of which both forms of
development occurred alternately.
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