236 LECTUEES ON BIOLOGY 



blood-corpuscles minute amoeboid germs which quickly grow by 

 feeding upon the blood-corpuscles. The red pigment of the 

 attacked blood-corpuscles is decomposed by the protoplasm of 

 the parasite and deposited in the interior of the Plasmodium in 

 the form of dark brown, almost black, pigment. The little 

 parasite continues to grow and finally completely fills the con- 

 siderably expanded blood-corpuscle which surrounds it now only 

 as with a thin membrane. 



By multiple division, first the nucleus and then the proto- 

 plasm of the Plasmodium form a number of spores, usually 

 twenty, at first held together by an undivided central plasrnic 

 body which, owing to the large accumulation of pigment in 

 its interior, appears almost black. Finally the blood-corpuscle 

 disintegrates, the spores are liberated, reach the blood and soon 

 infest another blood-corpuscle in which this process of growth 

 into a 'monont' and of spore formation begins anew (fig. 57, 

 1 5). Owing to the distribution in the blood of the pigment of 

 the disintegrated (residual) plasmic body the blood of a malaria 

 patient assumes a dark appearance. 



The entire process of the growth of the spore and its repro- 

 duction comprises in Plasmodium vivax and prcecox a space of 

 forty-eight hours, in Plasmodium malarice seventy-two hours. 



Externally the division of the monont into spores and their 

 invasion of healthy blood-corpuscles is perceptible by a rise in 

 the temperature a fever which, according to the species of the 

 cause of the disease, recurs regularly every forty-eight or seventy- 

 two hours. 



From the simple reproduction by fission as we saw it in the 

 Amoebae, Foraminifera and Infusoria the division of the malaria 

 parasite differs in many ways. In the first place the mother- 

 sporozoon disintegrates at once into a large number of descend- 

 ants, and, secondly, its body is not used up entirely for generating 

 the bodies of its descendants but a considerable part is doomed to 

 decay as a residuum. Does it not seem that we have here what 

 is called the morphologic side of the death problem, the first 

 appearance of a corpse ? Indeed, the process is so interpreted by 

 many investigators and the residual body described by them as a 

 corpse. But here, again, confusion arises from an inaccurate 

 definition of terms. 



