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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    parasites only the same kind invariably proceeds; and soon after this opinion was taken up by Grassi and Feletti, since which time it has been energetically defended. As mentioned already, Grassi and Feletti differentiate two genera, namely, the genus Hsemamoeba and the genus Laverania. To the first genus they reckon four species—H. malarias (quartan fever), H. vivax (tertian), H. prsecox (small amoeboid pigmented forms of pernicious fever; by the name pernicious fever the summer and autumnal fevers produced by the parasites which form crescents will be indicated in the sequel), H. immaculata (small amoeboid unpigmented forms of the pernicious fever) ; to tbe genus Laverania the species Laverania malarise (crescentic bodies). As is seen, Grassi and Feletti not only divide the known varieties of parasites into eight species, but they separate also the small amoeboid and spore-forming bodies Avhich are met with in the pernicious fevei's from the crescents. This will be referred to later on in detail. If we inquire for the reason of these various opinions about an apparently simple matter, we must consider in the first place that the different authorities have had different material to investigate, and that their conclusions do not result from a perfectly homo- geneous base. Whereas Laveran in Constantine had at his dis- posal severe tropical fevers, of which he says in his book [88, p. 127] that it was very difficult to separate the regular and ir- regular fevers from one another, and that nearly every malarial attack commenced as a continued fever, Golgi had in Pavia almost exclusively only slight forms of typical tertian and quartan fevers before him, and for a long time he found no opportunity of confirming the results obtained from pernicious fever, because the material at his disposal only provided him with such cases very occasionally. The Roman authors have material which may be characterised as being between that available at Constantine and that at Pavia, so that they have opportunity to observe both typical and excedingly irregular and pernicious fever types. The results of this variation in the material investigated are clearly shown by the reports which Laveran and Golgi give of their cases; while Laveran found in the blood of Algerian patients every possible form of parasite all together, in a com- plete melee, Golgi had the good fortune to obtain regular and typical results from his regular and typical fever material, so that we can understand how it was that he and not Laveran was destined to recognise the grouping of the parasitic forms, and to determine their relation to the type of fever.