Two monographs on malaria and the parasites of malarial fevers / I. Marchiafava and Bignami, II. Mannaberg.

  • New Sydenham Society
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two monographs on malaria and the parasites of malarial fevers / I. Marchiafava and Bignami, II. Mannaberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    and grows darker than usual. What is more interesting to observe is that the nutritive processes of the amoeba become feeble and then cease altogether; in fact the non-pigmented parasite does not proceed to develop and acquire pigment; and in cases where very fine granules of pigment, arranged at the circumference of the amoeba, have already appeared, the pigmen- tation goes no further. This may be taken as the general rule. On the other hand, there is a certain characteristic belonging to this group of summer-autumn fevers, which is analogous to what Golgi has observed in the quartans ; we refer to the fact that those intimate modi6cations which accompany the act of fission are carried out despite the action of the remedy, until the entire process is completed, as may be arrived at not so much from examining the blood of the finger, as from noting the presence of numerous fissional forms in the cerebral capillaries, even when death has occurred after several hours from the time that liberal doses of quinine were given [12]. But the new generation resulting from this production of spores, which is accomplished under the influence of the alkaloid, does not invade any other red blood-corpuscles. Other changes, manifested, for instance, in the appearance of the parasites, in their shape, in the characteristics of the pigment, '&c., cannot be seen in this class of fevers. While the other phenomena we have described may be satis- factorily intei'preted without difficulty, the last-mentioned fact cannot be itself directly observed, and hence it is possible to frame various hypotheses with a view to its explanation. The question is, what becomes of the spores formed during the period in which the quinine is active, and are they or are they not the source from which the new generation springs ? We know that not only the free spores, but also the amoebae, previous to their invasion of the red blood-corpuscles, pass, as a rule, undetected. Now, with regard to this matter, one may suppose (i) either that the quinine has a fatal effect on the spores, or on the young amoebge which are evolved from themj (ii) or else that it does not destroy the spores, but prevents their transformation into young Plasmodia. Of these two hypotheses, the first is opposed by the fact that all the malarial infections belonging to this group are nearly invariably followed by the recurrence of the fever; hence, supposing we assume that the quinine has the power to kill the spores aud the young amoebae which spring from them, it must nevertheless be admitted that not all the forms are sub- ject to this lethal action, which, consequently, cannot be said to