presidential address — section d. 75 



Neuromotor Apparatus in the Protozoa. 



Kecently, work on motor organellse has been published by 

 C. A. Kofoid and his pupils, of the University of California. 

 There is not very much that is actually new in this work, so far 

 as Flagellates are concerned, for it is chiefly a matter of new or 

 extended interpretation of previously desciibed structures. 



Thus, Kofoid* (1916) states that " the conditions of parasitic 

 life in a denser, more viscous medium increase the difficulties 

 of locomotion, and have resulted in the evolution of additional 

 motor organelles, and the establishment of a highly differentiated, 

 co-ordinated, neuromotor apparatus." 



The neuromotor apparatus consists of extranuclear chromatic 

 substances, especially the parabasal body in such a foim as 

 Giardia, and this body or bodies is a reservoir of substances closely 

 related to the basal granule or so-called blepharoplast at the base 

 of a flagellum. 



It may be noted that the many-named body, called by the 

 Germans the blepharoplast and by Woodcock the kinetonucleus in 

 the Ti'ypanosomidae, is homologous with the parabasal bodies ol 

 Giardia, and has recently been further named the kinetoplast. 



A neuromotor apparatus, part of which consists of a cir- 

 cum-oesophogeal ring, has. also recently been describedt for 

 species of the ciliates, Balantidium, Euplotes and Diplodinium. 



Sporozoa. 



In connection with malaria and malarial parasites, the pro- 

 blem of relapses is one of interest and one that is still imperfectly 

 understood. The work of Gaskell and Millar]; (1920) on malignant 

 tertian malaria in Macedonia sheds some light on the problem. 

 These authors classified the cases of infection with PJas)nodium 

 falciparum into three groups: (1) True cerebral, (2) septicaemic, 

 and (3) cardiac. In connection with the last-named form, which 

 was evidenced by collapse, the heart muscle showed signs of fatty 

 degeneration and fragmentation. Young trophozoites, popularly 

 termed " rings " of P. falciparum, were found inside these heart 

 muscle fibres, lying in the undifferentiated protoplasm around the 

 nuclei of the cardiac muscle fibres. The authors express the 

 opinion that cardiac muscle fibres may be a place where " the 

 parasite may be stored up in quiescent periods between attacks." 



Several new species of Eimeria have been described from 

 human faeces during the war. The species have been created 

 on differences of shape and size of the oocysts, but, unfortunately, 

 the life-histories of most of the new forms are not known. 



As an appendage to the Protozoology section, mention may be 

 made of recent work on the Spirochsetes of yellow fever and 

 infectious jaundice and on Eickettsia bodies. 



Yellow Fever and Infectious Jaundice. 



A great advance in knowledge of the causal agents of disease 

 w\Ts made when Noguchi (1919) announced the finding of a spiro- 



* Proc. Second Pan-American Scientific Congress, 

 t See University of California Publications in Zoology. 

 + Quart. Journal Medicine, xiii, pp. 381 — 426. 



