DESCRIPTIONS OF PATHOGENIC BACTERIA. 211 



at the end. Some parasites occur in the form 

 of crescents which, in blood removed from the 

 blood vessels, are slowly altered to spindle- 

 shaped, oval, and finally spherical structures ; 

 ; t is still uncertain whether this transformation 

 takes place also in the circulating blood. 

 While the spores are being formed, the pigment 

 gathers at the centre. The protoplasm then 

 falls apart by radial striations into a rosette- 

 shaped figure ; the peripheral portions of this 

 become the spores, the central heap of pigment 

 remaining behind. The spores arise, there- 

 fore, by a kind of segmentation of the cell- 

 contents. The unpigmented spore remains 

 free in the blood for some time, then attaches 

 itself to a red blood-corpuscle which it pen- 

 etrates and then proceeds to nourish itself at 

 the expense of the haemoglobin of the cor- 

 puscle. The crescents, according to Laveran, 

 are the encysted form of the parasite ; accord- 

 ing to Mannaberg, however, they are a con- 

 jugation-body or syzygy, that is to say, an in- 

 complete fusion of two parasites ; on this inter- 

 pretation, conjugation would be a preparation 

 for sporulation. 



Two views prevail as to the relation of these 

 forms to the different kinds of malarial fever. 

 Golgi assumes the existence of three varieties 

 of the parasite (namely, a quartan, a tertian, 



