108 PROTOZOAN PARASITISM 



medical practice that if there was any good at all it 

 became hopelessly lost. Soon began to appear ad- 

 verse reports as to the relation of the amoeba to 

 pyorrhoea and the failure of the suggested treatment 

 and it was not long before the whole idea was gener- 

 ally abandoned. 



It would seem remarkable indeed that those who 

 were instrumental in the rise of oral "endamoebiasis" 

 should have been so completely in error in their ob- 

 servations. It is difficult for the writer to believe 

 that some of what he saw in this work was unreal. 

 It is suggested — with timidity — that the canons of 

 oral amoebiasis have not been closed, that somewhere 

 in this work was something real which will yet be 

 uncovered from the avalanche of reactionary report. 



THE AMOEBA 



The amoeba of the mouth, which may be found 

 in fresh preparations in the living and moving state^ 

 and whose structure may be studied in detail by the 

 iron-haematoxylon staining method previously out- 

 lined, is most easily found in thin smears stained 

 as an ordinary blood film, by Wright's or Leishman's 

 stains. In the fresh warm motile state it reminds one 

 of Etidamoeba histolytica, having a similar progres- 

 sive motility. Ordinarily it ranges from ten to 

 twenty-five microns in diameter. In fresh prepara- 

 tions it may be seen to emerge from the particles of 

 debris with which it is in intimate association and 



