LEISHMANIA INFANTUM 109 



showing the relation of infantile kala-azar to Oriental sore. Gonder 

 infected mice with L. infantum and with L. tropica. He used culture 

 material and injected intraperitoneally or intravenously. In each a 

 general infection resulted, with enlargement of the liver and spleen. 

 Later, however, mice injected with Oriental sore (North African 

 variety) developed peripheral lesions on the feet, tail and head, and 

 the lesions contained Leisliinania. No such peripheral lesions 

 developed in the case of the mice infected with the kala-azar virus. 

 Gonder suggested that Oriental sore, like kala-azar, is really a general 

 infection overlooked in its earlier stages, and that it is in the later 

 stages that peripheral lesions on the skin are developed. Row (I9I4) 1 

 also obtained a general infection in a mouse by the injection of 

 cultures of L. tropica from Oriental sore of Cambay. 



Leishmania infantum, Nicolle, 



Infantile splenic anaemia has been long known in Italy. It also 

 occurs in Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, Syria, Greece, Turkey, Crete, Sicily, 

 Malta, 3 Spain and Portugal. This leishmaniasis is, then, distributed along 

 the Mediterranean littoral; also in Russia. Cathoire (1904) in Tunis 

 and Pianese (1905) in Italy were among the first to see the parasite. 

 Nicolle then found the parasite in patients in Tunis, and further found 

 spontaneous infection in dogs. The patients are usually children 

 between the ages of 2 and 5 years. There are a few cases known in 

 which the infantile type of leishmaniasis occurred in youths and adults 

 of the ages of 17 to 19, while one patient in Calabria was 38 years old. 

 The symptoms are like those of Indian kala-azar. Several Italian 

 investigators and others consider that L. infantum is the same as 

 L. donovani, and that the latter name should be used for the parasite 

 of Mediterranean leishmaniasis. This view, as to the identity of 

 L. donovani and L. infantum, seems coming into general favour. 



There are, however, differences between the Indian and infantile 

 kala-azars, in addition to the ages of the patients affected, thus : 

 (a) As regards cultures, it is found that L. infantum is readily grown 

 on the Novy-MacNeal-Nicolle (" N.N.N.") medium (saline blood- 

 agar), and that sub-cultures are easily obtained ; in citrated blood 

 L. infantum grows with difficulty. The reverse is the case with 

 regard to culture media for L. donovani, which grows with difficulty 

 on the N.N.N. medium, but relatively easily in citrated splenic blood. 

 (6) Considering inoculability into experimental animals, it is found that 

 L. donovani is inoculated generally with some difficulty into white rats, 



1 Bull. Soc. Path. Exot., vii, p. 272. 2 Arch. Inst. Pasteur Tunis, i, p. 26. 



3 See Wenyon (1914), Trans. Soc. Trap. Med. and Hyg., vii, p. 97; also Critien (1911), 

 Annals Trop. Med. and ParasitoL, v, p. 37. 



