AN ADDRESS ON THE HAEMATOZOA OF MALARIA.[1]
By WILLIAM OSLER, M.D., F.R.C.P
Professor of Clinical Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania.
Our knowledge of the animal parasites infesting the blood has been of late enriched by observations which show that certain of these hæmatozoa, as they are called, are more widely distributed and more important than we had hitherto supposed. Parasites belonging to the spirozoa, and to the nematode and trematode worms, have long been known to occur in the blood of various animals. Recent investigations prove that the flagellate protozoa are also not uncommon blood parasites, and it is possible that they may be the pathogenic organisms of certain diseases. I propose in this communication to give an account of the hæmatozoa which have been found in persons suffering with the various forms of malaria.
Historical.—Our knowledge of the blood-changes I am about to describe, dates from the researches of Laveran, in Algiers, which were communicated to the Paris Academy of Medicine in 1881 and 1882, and which were finally embodied in a large work on the malarial fevers, published in 1884.[2] He found, as characteristic elements in the blood of persons attacked with malaria, (1) crescentic pigmented bodies; (2) pigmented bodies in the interior of the red corpuscles, which underwent changes in form, described as amœboid; and (3) a pigmented flagellate organism. These forms were looked upon as phases in the development of an infusorial organism which he regarded as the germ of the disease. Richard [3] confirmed these observations. A
