The malarial fevers of Baltimore : An analysis of 616 cases of malarial fever, with special reference to the relations existing between different types of haematozoa and different types of fever / by William Sydney Thayer and John Hewetson.

  • Thayer, William Sydney, 1864-1932.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The malarial fevers of Baltimore : An analysis of 616 cases of malarial fever, with special reference to the relations existing between different types of haematozoa and different types of fever / by William Sydney Thayer and John Hewetson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    differ from the sarcodic prolongations by their form and their dimen- sions, which are mucli more regular, and in the vivacity and the variety of their movements. None of the observers who have, them- selves, seen the flagelia go through their various motions, rolling and unrolling upon themselves, causing the most varied movements among the surrounding red corpuscles, which they sometimes seem to seek to pierce, would venture to assert that one could confound these move- ments with those of the sarcodic prolongations produced by heat. The flagelia move, sometimes, so rapidly that they cause changes in the position of the spherical body to which they are attached. When they are free, they preserve the same vivacity, the same variety of movement. (Page 87.) Danilewsky *''*' holds similar views concerning these bodies. Dock^'^'' suggests that the flagellate bodies represent resting states of the organism, capable of existing independently, perhaps even of reproducing themselves, but also able, under favorable circumstances, of reproducing the typical growth of the parasite. Mannaberg'^ takes an interesting view not dissimilar to that of Dock. He writes as follows: In my opinion, these forms, as has been already said, are by no means to be regarded as phenomena of death ('agonieproducte'). It could hardly be explained why only a relatively small number of the parasites present show these changes when all the bodies in the preparation die in a short time. Moreover, one ought to see, here and there, flagelia in the circulating blood, in which, as I shall later show, there occurs, at the time of the paroxysm, a great mortality among the parasites, dying forms being present in numbers. The same would be expected after the giving of quinine; but none of these tilings actually occur. Finally the remarkable activity of the movements is a convincing argument against the idea that the process is a phenomenon of the agony. My idea is, that we have, in tiie flagelia, organs which permit the parasites to enter into a saprophytic existence. I suspect that the flagellate bodies enter upon the first steps of a cycle of existence outside of the human body, and that, as a result of the unfitting culture medium, the death of the young spores occurs. He notices, also, that they do not develop until the blood lias been outside of the body for some little time. Manson ''* believes that ... the flagellated organism which proceeds from the crescentic body is the first stage in the life of the