Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/652

632 been made during the chill, and the blood has not been drawn directly from the spleen; these observations are therefore to be considered as incomplete, and, if opportunity offers, will be supplemented by more extended microscopical researches."

Notwithstanding this adverse criticism, based upon an experimental research made for the purpose of confirming the alleged discovery, if it should prove to have a scientific foundation, the Bacillus malariœ was pretty generally regarded by physicians in this country and in England as being the veritable cause of malarial fevers, and for several years it was frequently mentioned in medical journals and even in standard text-books of medicine as one of the demonstrated disease germs. But truth is mighty, and in the end must prevail. To-day no one speaks of the Bacillus malariœ of Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli except to refer to it as one of the pseudo-discoveries, which for a time passed current, like a counterfeit coin, but which was detected and thrown aside when subjected to approved scientific tests.

The first confirmation in this country of Laveran's discovery of amœboid parasites in the blood of malarial-fever cases was made by the present writer in the pathological laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in March, 1886. In May, 1885, I had visited Rome as a delegate to the International Sanitary Conference convened in that city under the auspices of the Italian Government, and while there I visited the Santo Spirito Hospital for the purpose of witnessing a demonstration, by Drs. Marchiafava and Celli, of that city, of the presence of the Plasmodium malariœ in the blood of persons suffering from intermittent fever. Blood was drawn from the finger during the febrile attack and from individuals to whom quinine had not been administered. The demonstration was entirely satisfactory, and no doubt was left in my mind that I saw living parasitic micro-organisms in the interior of red blood-corpuscles obtained from the circulation of malarial-fever patients. The motions were quite slow, and were manifested by a gradual change of outline rather than by visible movement. After a period of amœboid activity of greater or less duration, the body again assumed an oval or spherical form and remained quiescent for a time. While in this form it was easily recognized, as the spherical shape caused the light passing through it to be refracted and gave the impression of a body having a dark contour and a central vacuole; but when it was flattened out and undergoing amœboid changes in form, it was necessary to focus very carefully and to have a good illumination in order to see it. The objective used was a Zeiss's one-twelfth-inch homogeneous oil immersion.

The changes in form which a single plasmodium, included in a red blood-corpuscle, was observed by Marchiafava and Celli to