Abstract
THE study of the causes of intermittent or malarial fevers has received a marked impetus through the discovery by Laveran (Traité des fièvres palustres, 1884) of the presence in the blood of the affected persons of definite living bodies belonging to the protozoa. A large amount of important research has been carried on since, concerning these bodies or corpuscles of Laveran, which has yielded not only a clearer understanding of their morphological and biological characters, but has more accurately defined and placed on a firm basis the relation oof these protozoa to the different known types of malarial fevers: febris quotidiana, tertiana, quartana—terms denoting the rhythm of the fever paroxysm. The researches of Laveran, of Marchiafava and Celli, of Golgi, of Celli and Guarneri, Grassi and Feletti, Councilman, Danilewsky, Mannaberg and others have definitely established that malarial fevers are characterised by and due to the presence, within the red blood discs of the patient, of parasites belonging to the group of protozoa known as sporozoa (gregarinida, coccidia and hæmosporidia); that is to say, of minute amœboid corpuscles, measuring not more than a sixth or an eighth or less of the broad diameter of a red blood disc, having entered into a blood disc pass their life cycle intraglobularly, growing in size at the expense of the blood disc, consuming the latter's substance till of the host nothing but a small mass of black pigment—the remnant of the blood pigment—is left. The final phase in the life-history of this plasmodium malariæ or hæmoplasmodium malariæ as reached when by a process of simultaneous fission its body produces a number of minute oval spores. These becoming free in the blood fluid are carried by the circulation into the different internal organs: marrow of bone, brain, and notably the spleen. Here at the proper time each spore germinates into an amœboid plasmodium, which passes as such into the general circulation, and, having invaded a red blood disc, goes through all the stages of its intraglobular growth and final sporulation. There is a good deal of evidence to show that the phase of sporulation and consequent dissolution of the central part of the parasite, not consumed by the spores themselves, is actually one of the direct causes of the fever paroxysm .; at any rate, these events coincide with the commencement of the febrile attack. One of the most important amongst the many interesting facts elucidated is this, that the duration of the life cycle of the plasmodium malariæ stands in a direct ratio to, and determines the rhythm of the consecutive fever attacks in this way: in febris quartana the plasmodium finishes its cycle in seventy-two hours, in febris tertiana in forty-eight hours, and in febris quotidiana and perniciosa — so common and so virulent in tropical and subtropical regions—the whole process of development is very rapid, the plasmodia are conspicuously small and very numerous, very active, and sporulation takes place chiefly in the internal viscera, notably the spleen.
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KLEIN, E. The Etiology and Prevention of Malarial Fever. Nature 58, 175–176 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058175c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058175c0