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

  • New Sydenham Society
Date:
1894
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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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    source^ and Mosler [64], &c., while the others pleaded for the foi-mation of pigment in the blood itself; among the latter, Arnstein [65] must be specially mentioned, as he distinctly- described the melanasmia as the first factor of which the melanosis is the result. Arnstein and Kelsch [66] almost simultaneously took the side of the oingin of the pigment in the circulating blood, bringing forward as the chief argument that sometimes, even in intense melantemia, no trace of pigment is found in the spleen, and there- fore that that organ cannot be considered the source of the new product. C. Schwalbe [67] put forward a remarkable idea, namely, that, by the injection of carbon bisulphide and oxysulphide of carbon (also by inhalation of the latter) into animals, melauEemia could be produced, and therefore it followed that malaria was a poisoning with these substances and that they were present in the malarial atmosphere as gas. B. Afanassiew [68] also had an idea which differed from the others in that he held the pigment granules, on account of their equal-sized grains, to be chromogen micrococci. Marchiafava [69], on the other hand, as early as 1879 considered that the melanin was formed tuithin the red hlood-corpuscles, basing this opinion upon microscopical appearances in the marrow of bones and splenic pulp in malarial subjects (p. m.). In these he frequently saw altered red blood-corpuscles enclosed in the large leucocytes. To-day we know that these are blood-corpuscles infested by phagocytes. Marchiafava and Celli [17] were of the same opinion when they wrote in 1884 that they believed the bodies stained by methylene blue (now recognised to be the malarial parasites) to be a necrosis of the red blood-corpuscles, dans laquelle s'opere la trans- formation de I'hemoglobine en melanine. With this expression both these authors indicated the place where the melaneemia originates from the hasmoglobin, only they could not then state the originating cause of this so remarkable a transformation. This last point is first clearly dealt with by Laveran [18], who likewise in 1884 writes as follows : II parait tres vraisemblable, en effet, que les grains pigmentes ne sont que des produits de destruction des hematics, des residus de leur digestion par les microbes du paludisme, si j'ose ainsi dire, residus qui s'accumu- lent dans I'interieur des corps cystiques (1. c, p. 205).^ ' It appears vei*y probable that in reality the pigmented granules are only the products of the destruction of the hsematin, the residue of its digestion