166 INSECTS AND MAN 



Africa, Australia, North and South America, and many 

 districts in Asia know the disease, as well as Russia, 

 Roumania, Finland, Central Europe, Sardinia, Germany, 

 Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Scotland, and more rarely 

 England. In England and Ireland the disease is known 

 as red water or red murrain ; in Scotland it is called moor 

 ill or moor evil ; Australia has given it the name of tick 

 fever; bovine malaria is its name in the Argentine, and 

 Texas fever in the United States. The name matters 

 little, for the disease is the same all the world over, 

 although various ticks are concerned in its transmission. 



Red water in cattle, to give the disease its popular name, 

 which is derived from the red colour of the urine, owing 

 to the parasites carrying the disease having destroyed the 

 red-blood corpuscles, was, at one time, thought to be caused 

 by some irritant taken by cattle during feeding, and to 

 be especially prevalent in marshy districts. In 1888, how- 

 ever, Babes, when examining the blood of some Roumanian 

 cattle attacked by red water, found therein some shining 

 round bodies of whose purport he was unaware. In the 

 following year an American scientist, Theobald Smith, 

 also discovered micro-organisms in the blood of cattle 

 suffering from Texas fever; these parasites were eventually 

 called Piroplasma bigeminum. Following on this dis- 

 covery came reports of the disease from practically all over 

 the civilised world, and, in every case, the parasite was 

 found in the blood of the afflicted animals. 



Before proceeding to a description of the ticks conveying 

 bovine piroplasmosis, a word or two concerning the parasite 

 itself may not be out of place. It is hardly necessary to 

 remark that the blood of cattle resembles human blood, in 

 that it is composed of a liquid plasma in which float red- 

 blood corpuscles ; it is in these corpuscles that the majority 

 of the parasites occur, though a few may occasionally be 

 found in the plasma. In outline, Piroplasma bigeminum 

 may be pear-shaped or circular; often two parasites are 



