18 HANDBOOK OF PROTOZOOLOGY 



attempts to cultivate them in vitro should be made. Musgrave 

 and Clegg (1904) cultivated, on bouillon-agar, small free-living 

 amoebae from old fecal matter. In 1905 Novy and McNeal 

 cultivated successfully the trypanosome of birds in blood-agar 

 medium, which remained free from bacterial contamination and 

 in which the organisms underwent multiplication. Almost all 

 species of Trypanosoma and Leishmania have since been culti- 

 vated in a similar manner. This serves for detection of a mild 

 infection and also identification of the species involved. It was 

 found, further, that the changes which these organisms under- 

 went in the culture media were imitative of those that took 

 place in the invertebrate host, thus contributing toward the 

 life-cycle studies of them. 



Bass (1911) and Bass and Johns (1912) demonstrated that 

 Plasmodium of man could be cultivated in vitro for a few genera- 

 tions. During and since the world war, it became known that 

 numerous intestinal Protozoa of man are widely present 

 throughout the tropical, subtropical and temperate zones. Tax- 

 onomic and developmental studies on these forms have, there- 

 fore, appeared in an enormous number. Cutler (1918) seems 

 to have succeeded in cultivating Entamoeba histolytica, though 

 his experiment was not repeated by others. Barret and Yar- 

 borough (1921) cultivated Balantidium coli and Boeck (1921) 

 also cultivated Chilomastix mesnili. Boeck and Drbohlav 

 (1925) succeeded in cultivating Entamoeba histolytica, and their 

 work was repeated and improved upon by several investigators. 

 While the cultivation has not yet thrown any new light on the 

 life-history of the amoeba, it seems to have some value for 

 diagnosing an infection. Since that time, almost all intestinal 

 Protozoa of both vertebrates and invertebrates have been 

 cultivated in vitro. 



References 



BuTSCHLi, O. 1887-1889 Protozoa. Bronn's Klassen und 

 Ordnungen des Thier-reichs. Vol. 1, Part 3. 



Calkins, G. N. 1926 The biology of the Protozoa. Philadel- 

 phia. 



Cole, F. J. 1926 The history of protozoology. London. 



DOBELL, C. 1911 The principles of protistology. Archiv fur 

 Protistenkunde, Vol. 23. 



