The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
It was found that the life cycles of these parasites ran parallel
with the clinical cycle of malarial disease. It was found that when
the parasite had arrived at maturity the apyretic interval in an ague
was about to conclude, and that when the parasite had arrived at the
sporulating stage the patient had entered on the shivering stage of
his fever. During that and the succeeding hot and sweating stage the
spores had entered the red blood corpuscles, and when the parasite had
ensconced itself in the red blood corpuscle and begun to grow, the
fever had come to an end. It was found in tertian fever that the cycle
of the parasite took forty-eight hours to complete, exactly the length
of the cycle of the clinical phenomena. In quartan fever the cycle took
seventy-two hours, exactly the length of the clinical cycle of that
form of malarial disease. In the malignant or tropical fevers there was
found to be a similar correspondence between the cycle of the parasite
and the cycle of the disease. It was found that with each recurring
paroxysm of fever there was a renewal of the life of the parasite, and
that in this way the life of the parasite was continued from period to
period and from cycle to cycle for weeks or even, especially in the
case of quartan malaria, for months. Now this explains very well the
way in which the malaria parasite contrives to maintain its existence
in the human body, but it does not explain how it passes from host to
host, neither does it explain certain appearances that Laveran and
everybody else who has studied the subject have witnessed. In malarial
blood you sometimes see that peculiar body, the flagellated body, which
I have already alluded to as consisting of a sphere surrounded by from
one to six or seven long tentacles or arms in a state of continual
agitation. Neither does it explain the peculiar crescent-shaped body
which also so pointedly arrested Laveran’s attention.... Golgi’s
scheme leaves the passage of the parasite from host to host and also
the nature of these two bodies unexplained. What relation have these
two bodies to the life of the parasite? Their nature and purpose do
not receive any illumination from Golgi’s theory. You will find in all
forms of malarial infection, if you look enough, the flagellated body;
but, strange to say, you will not find it in malarial blood immediately
after it is withdrawn from the body. It is only after an interval of
minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, after the blood is withdrawn
that these flagellated bodies appear. Whence do they come? If you make
a preparation of malarial blood from a patient by pricking the finger
and spreading a little of the blood on a slide, fixing it immediately
with heat or alcohol and staining it, you will never see any of these
flagellated organisms. But if the slip be kept moist and in a warm
temperature for half an hour and then stained, the flagellated bodies
will be seen, proving that they develop only after the escape of the
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