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bear a very striking resemblance to those which have been given of the 
Leishman-Donovan bodies. Regarding the researches of Cunningham 
and Firth, Wright has already remarked that we can not be sure that 
these observers were encountering parasites. In considering the more 
recent work, extending from the investigations of Borowsky to the present 
time, it is very difficult in some instances to determine the exact nature 
of the bodies encountered.: While sometimes the detailed descriptions of 
the parasites are very definite, yet, when the drawings or photomicro- 
graphs accompanying the articles are examined, grave doubts enter as to 
the nature or the identity of the bodies in the particular instance con- 
sulted, with those forms described by the other observers. I believe that 
it will be impossible for us to elucidate this matter from a consultation of 
the literature only; and I therefore think it will be advantageous to have 
histological specimens from all of the reported lesions in which the pro- 
tozoon-like bodies have been encountered examined by one thoroughly 
competent observer who is willing to undertake this work. 
On account of the similarity of the organisms encountered in these 
cases of Oriental sore to the so-called Leishman-Donovan bodies, let us 
consider for a moment something of the nature of these latter forms. 
THE LEISHMAN-DONOVAN BODY. 
As is now well known, Leishman, (35) in May, 1903, “in making smear prep- 
arations from the spleen pulp of a case of so-called dum-dum fever, was struck 
by the curious appearance among the spleen cells and red corpuscles of enormous 
numbers of small round or oval bodies, two to three microns in diameter, which 
corresponded to nothing which he had previously met with or had seen figured or 
described. They stained faintly with methylene-blue and with hemetein, showing 
with these stains a sharply contoured or oval shape, but no detailed structure; 
but on staining them by Romanowsky’s method, they were found to possess a 
quantity of chromatin, of a very definite and regular shape, which clearly 
differentiated them from blood plates or possible nuclear detritus. This chro- 
matin appeared in the form of a more or less definitely circular mass or ring, 
applied to which, although apparently not in direct connection with it, was a 
much smaller chromatin mass, usually in the form of a short rod, set perpendic- 
ularly or at a tangent to the circumference of the larger mass. The outline of 
the sphere or oval inclosing these masses of chromatin was only faintly visible 
by this method of staining. These little bodies were scattered freely among the 
cells, as a rule isolated one from the other, but here and there aggregated into 
clumps composed of 20 to 50 members.” 
Leishman was unable to say what these bodies were at the time, but later, 
when working with nagana, upon investigating the blood and internal organs of 
a white rat, dead of this disease, he found bodies practically identical in shape 
and staining reaction with those he had encountered in the spleen of his case of 
dum-dum fever. He concluded that these parasites were degenerated trypanosoma 
and that probably this particular case represented an infection with this organism. 
Donovan (36) was the next one to observe these bodies, and later Ross 
(37) and Laveran (38) also reported in regard to the parasites. Ross 
inclined to the belief that they were Sporozoa, while Laveran, who found 
