29» ANNÉE NOVEMBRE 191» N» 11 



ANNALES 



DE 



L'INSTITUT PASTEUR 



Mémoire publié à 1 occasion du jubilé de E. METCHNIKOFF. 



REJViARKS ON THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE 



OF THE SO-CALLED 



" INFECTIVE GRANULES " OF PROTOZOA 



])} E. A. M INCH IN (1). 



During the past feAv years several investigators have observed 

 the extrusion of minute corpuscles from the bodies of various 

 Protozoa parasitic in the blood of Vertebrates. The first obser- 

 vation of this kind appears to have been made by Major W. B, 

 Fry in 1911, who communicated his results io the Royal Society 

 in June 1911. He regarded these socalled granules as true de- 

 velopmental stages of the parasite which, after extrusion from 

 the body of the irypanosome, were capable of developing into 

 the a'lult form again. Similar obsei'vations were made on the 

 spirochœtes of fowls by Dr. Andrew Balfour, in whose labora- 

 tory at Khartoum the observation of Fiy were made, and who 

 proposed for these bodies the term « infective granules ». 



At the time when the discoveries of Fry and Balfour were 

 published, I was engaged in writing my text-book on ihe Pro- 



(1) E. A. Mi-vrmx, professeur de protozoologie à l'Université de Londres, 

 membre de la Société Royale, a succombé en octobre dernier à une lono-ue 

 maladie. La rédaction des Annales s'associe aux regrets causés par !a niort 

 prématurée de cet eminent zoologiste. 



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