Amebic Dysentery 689 



a difficult one, and might not have been solved had he not 

 made use of a new means of investigation, viz., the phenom- 

 enon of agglutination. By studying such bacteria as could 

 be cultivated from the intestinal discharges, with particular 

 reference to the effect of the blood of dysenteric patient's 

 blood in agglutinating them, Shiga * succeeded in discovering 

 a new micro-organism which he called Bacillus dysenteriae. 

 Two years afterward Krusef investigated an outbreak of 

 dysentery in an industrial section of Westphalia and found 

 the same bacillus, and FlexnerJ showed the same bacillus to 

 be present in the epidemic dysentery of the Philippine 

 Islands. 



Thus the discovery of Shiga became thoroughly substanti- 

 ated, and it became evident that in addition to theameba there 

 was a bacillus to be reckoned with in the etiology of dysen- 

 tery. It soon became evident that there are two forms of 

 dysentery, one amebic, the other bacillary. Both occur spo- 

 radically and endemically in the tropics and in temperate 

 climates, and both may occur epidemically, though of the 

 two the bacillary form is much more liable to do so. Of the 

 chronic cases of dysentery 90 per cent, are amebic. 



L AMEBIC DYSENTERY. 



AMOEBA COLI (Loscn, 1875); AMCEBA DYSENTERIC (COUN- 

 CILMAN AND LAFLEUR, 1893); ENTAMCEBA HisToivYTicA 



(SCHAUDINN, 1903.) 



As has been shown, amebas were first found in the human 

 intestine by Lambl; in dysentery, by Losch, Koch, Gaffky, 

 Kartulis, Osier, Councilman and Lafleur, and many others. 

 The welcome finally accorded to the organisms as excitants 

 of dysentery was sufficiently enthusiastic to compensate for 

 the neglect of a quarter of a century. In all countries intes- 

 tinal ameba was looked for, and while it was becoming clear 

 in the minds of many pathologists that there could be no 

 doubt about the role played by the ameba in dysentery, it 

 was becoming equally clear to others that amebas were not 

 infrequently present in intestines in which there was not and 

 had not been dysenteric infection, and many cases of dysentery 



* "Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk.," 1898, xxiv, 817. 

 t "Deutsche med. Wochenschrift," 1900, No. 40. 

 t "Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk.," 1900, xxvm, No. 19. 

 44 



