THE CONSERVATION OF LIFE 237 



What is a corpse ? The question sounds so simple and is yet 

 full of difficulties. May we describe any rejected part of a living 

 organism being doomed to decay as a corpse? Can this term 

 be applied in this specific case to the residual body, and am 

 I justified by the appearance of this residual body in saying 

 that the Plasmodium dies a natural death? In my opinion 

 I would be equally justified in contending that the act of 

 birth in the higher mammals and man is accompanied by an 

 act of death, because during birth a part of the material body, 

 the placenta, is rejected and perishes. But no one thinks 

 of describing the placenta as a corpse in this sense, as no one 

 would think of describing an amputated arm or leg, a destroyed 

 eye or a drop of shed blood as a corpse. Why should we then 

 make an exception here in the unicellular organisms, limit the 

 contents of the term, and give it another meaning? It seems 

 clear that we can only describe as a corpse the sum-total of all 

 parts of an organism that has perished, but not any one part 

 of a body which did not before possess autonomous life. In the 

 unicellular organism it is the entire cell, in the multicellular and 

 the higher animals it is the entire organism which becomes 

 a corpse. 



While the asexual form of reproduction serves as a means of 

 rapid distribution of the Plasmodium in the body of the host 

 and leads to the flooding of the host with disease germs, the 

 transmission of the parasite from man to the second host, the 

 gnat, is effected by an act of reproduction. In speaking of these 

 processes I shall confine myself to Plasmodium (Hcemamoeba) 

 prcecox, the cause of the dangerous perniciosa. 



If a mosquito of the genus Anopheles sucks the blood of 

 a fever patient it happens that with the healthy blood-corpuscles 

 some that have been attacked by parasites reach the intestines 

 of the gnat. While in the body of this intermediate host the 

 disease germs which were predestined to asexual reproduction 

 soon perish, we observe that some of the spores undergo 

 a remarkable transformation. For a number of the parasites 

 grow vigorously, assuming at first the shape of a half-moon, but 

 gradually a globular form. We describe them as female germs or 

 oogonies. Others, the male germs or the antheridia, pass at first 

 through a similar transformation and are then only with difficulty 



