354 BOOK REVIEW 



characteristic methylen-blue stain, while thousands of minute bodies 

 in and around the cells, and not seen before, were revealed. The 

 method used was very simple : the sections were first stained for from 

 two to six hours in dilute aqueous acid fuchsin (0.2 per cent), rinsed 

 in distilled water and then stained for from six to ten hours in Ehrlich's 

 fuchsin-methylen-blue mixture, then rinsed thoroughly in distilled 

 water after which they were left in absolute alcohol until no more 

 color came out, and were cleared in xylol and mounted in balsam. 



The important part of Stauffacher's work centers in the cell inclusions 

 and the similar bodies found in the lymph spaces and in the blood of 

 infected animals. These are minute polymorphic structures with an 

 average length of one micron (1 fj.), and either spherical, ellipsoidal, 

 crescentic, chain-form, comma-form, or ring-form in shape. They 

 were found in all of the infected animals (26) examined, and were never 

 found in similar tissues of normal, healthy animals. The same bodies 

 were found in the freshly-drawn blood, both free in the plasma and 

 within the red blood corpuscles of infected animals, a fact which practi- 

 cally excludes the possibility that they are products of nuclear and 

 cellular degeneration brought about by the disease. 



Blood was drawn from the jugular vein of an infected animal under 

 sterile conditions, and a few drops were added to sterile tubes of blood 

 agar prepared according to Nicolle's formula for growing Leishmania. 

 Vesicles on the tongues of infected cows were flooded with sterilized 

 distilled water which was then withdrawn and placed in similar agar 

 tubes, one cubic centimeter to each tube. On the fourth day after- 

 wards, the tubes containing the vesicular lymph had a decidedly milky 

 appearance. A drop of this, examined under the microscope, showed 

 myriads of actively moving organisms. The tubes with the venous 

 blood showed the same picture somewhat later. Two distinct types 

 of organisms were observed; one, shorter and thicker, had the char- 

 acteristic appearance of a flagellated protozoon, with a lancet-formed 

 body which becomes sharply attenuated and drawn out into a long 

 flagellum. The average length of these individuals was 45 n of which 

 the body comprised from 20 to 25 ju with a diameter of about 3 m- The 

 second type was much longer and more thread-like, v^ith maximum 

 dimensions of 120 ju by 1 ju. Granules within the bodies of these two 

 types were regarded as blepharoplast, nucleus and chromidia; the 

 bodies themselves were not metabolic, nor was there any evidence of 

 mouth or vacuoles. Reproduction by longitudinal division was common 

 to all types. In addition to reproduction by division, another method 

 analogous to spore-formation was described; in this the body becomes 

 thickly strewn with chromidia, each of which becomes the minute 

 nucleus of an excessively small spherical structure, similar to some of 

 the intra-cellular stages, and which might well be able to pass a filter. 



Finally Stauffacher inoculated two normal cows with the uncon- 

 taminated agar culture material. The first experiment was interrupted 

 by the mobilization of the Swiss army in August, 1914, and we are not 

 told what became of the animal. The second experiment was successful, 



