SPIROCHJiTOSIS OF SUDANESE FOWLS 85 



which waves to aud fro. The appearance may be roughly imitated by making a 

 ring of the thumb and index of one hand. Then pass the two terminal phalanges of 

 the index finger of the other hand through the centre of the space thus enclosed, and 

 move them so that the tip of the linger waggles briskly to and fi-o. I have said 

 the appearance is that of a tiny filament, yet this may be an optical illusion, and the 

 curious phenomenon may depend on the active movement of granules into which the 

 body is breaking up. After many observations, however, I am inclined to believe in 

 the presence of an actual filament which may or may not be a portion of a partially 

 encysted spirocheete." 



I am now inclined to think that in the blood of these Sudanese fowls two or more The true 

 "inclusion forms" are to be met with in the red cells which, under certain conditions, "after phase 



body is pro- 

 may very closely resemble each other. Thus, in the fresh blood, I doubt if the motue tablynot 



bodies described were examples of the true " after phase " forms. These latter were motfle 



certainly present in the blood, but I am now driven to believe that they are invariably 



motionless save for the slight oscillations mentioned in the paper in our Third Eeport. 



On page 19 of that Eeport it will be seen that one records movement in what appeared to 



be an " undoubted " body. It did not then occur to me that the blood was being examined 



under abnormal conditions and that the fact that it was heated probably explaiaed this 



phenomenon even if the body seen did represent a true "after phase" form, which may 



not have been the case. Both this body and other motile forms I am now inclined to 



consider as the vesicles described by Crawley {page 118j, though it seems to me impossible 



to distinguish them from the true inclusions which stain well and which I am endeavoiu-ing, 



by advancing further arguments, to prove to be endoglobular stages of the fowl spirochete 



in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. 



-Is regards the second observation, that of the filament phenomenon, I am still in 

 doubt, not as regards its occurrence, for that has been confirmed by several observers here, 

 but as to its precise significance. 



The fact that I have never observed it in the blood of normal gerbils and yet noted it 

 in the blood of several gerbils which had been inoculated, either with human spirochaetal 

 blood or the blood of animals successfully inoculated with the spirochetes of Eg\-ptian 

 relapsing fever, would tend to show that it bears some relation to spirochetosis. Some 

 of these gerbils showed spirochetes, for brief periods, in the blood, others did not. 

 In one of the latter, examination of the spleen and liver by the Levaditi method was 

 negative as regards the presence of spirochetes. This, however, in view of the variable 

 results obtained in chicks {page 86), means little. That these filament bodies, however, 

 are not the true " after phase" bodies, though exceedingly like them in fresh blood, would 

 seem to be proved by a control case in which a chick with, so far as could be told from 

 examination, perfectly healthy blood, was iaoculated with two drops of citrated finger-blood 

 from a case of human spirochetosis (Sp. berbera .^). In fresh films on the day following, 

 bodies showing the fUament phenomenon were present in or on the red cells, and yet 

 nothing was visible in stained preparations. It is true that careful focussing made me 

 regard these bodies, which were not again found, as epi-corpuscular, but they showed the 

 waving filaments. 



Is it then possible that, apart altogether from the question of spirochete invasion Is the con- 

 of the red cells, there is present in the spirochetal blood some toxic substance which bvatoiiii? 

 affects the cytoplasm of the erythrocytes producing a peculiar vesicular condition apparent 

 only in the fresh blood and, possibly, in addition, certain degenerative changes which in 

 stained films either resemble or are themselves the true "after phase" bodies? In order 



