22 THE AMOEBAE LIVING IN MAN 



not appear to have been amoebae at all. What they were I cannot 

 determine from his account.* In a second paper, however, published 

 in the following year (Kartulis, 1886), he gives a very different descrip- 

 tion of "amoebae." He says he studied 150 cases of undoubted 

 dysentery in Egypt, and found amoebae in all. In sections of the 

 intestinal ulcers of 12 of these cases he also succeeded in finding the 

 parasites — thus confirming the observations of Koch. Control cases, 

 not suffering from dysentery, were never found infected. The amoebae 

 are said to have measured 12-30 fi in diameter, and other characters are 

 also noted ; but his description of them is very inferior to Losch's. At 

 this date Kartulis could record only negative results from his attempts 

 to infect laboratory animals, and to cultivate the parasites. He con- 

 sidered, however, that the amoebae were the cause of " tropical dysen- 

 tery," and appears to have identified them with Losch's " Amoeba 

 coli." Although it is now certain that many of Kartulis's amoebae 

 really were E. histolytica, it is inconceivable that he could really have 

 found this parasite in every one of 150 cases of clinical dysentery 

 examined in Egj'pt, and in no non-dysenteric cases. Some at least 

 of his dysenteric patients must have been cases of bacillary dysentery, 

 and it would be impossible now for any competent worker to examine 

 many non-dysenteric persons in Egypt without finding E. histolytica.^ 



A year later Kartulis (1887) published another important paper, 

 announcing that he had found his amoebae in the pus of liver 

 abscesses — thus confirming the much earlier suspicions of the Anglo- 

 Indian doctors, and the observation of Koch, that "tropical" liver 

 abscess is a sequel to a certain form of dysentery and due to the same 

 cause. A fuller account of his observations was published two years 

 later (Kartulis, 1889) ; and still later he recorded that he had been able 

 to infect cats with the amoebae, and thereby to produce dysentery in 

 them experimentally (Kartulis, 1891). In this he appears to have been 

 anticipated by Hlava (1887), working at Prague. Unfortunately, 

 Kartulis (1891) also claimed to have cultivated the dysentery amoebae 

 (in straw infusions, exposed to the air), and to have produced dysentery 

 in cats by injecting the cultures. These obviously fallacious experi- 

 ments were soon seized upon and discredited by other workers, and 

 served rather to weaken than to strengthen his contention that intestinal 

 amoebae are the cause of "tropical" dysentery and liver abscess. The 

 last important contribution made by Kartulis to our knowledge of the 

 dysentery amoeba was his discovery of the parasite in abscesses of the 

 brain (Kartulis, 1904). That the brain, like the liver, may be secondarily 

 infected is now a well established fact — foreshadowed long ago in the 

 work of Morehead and the Anglo-Indian clinicians, and fully confirmed 

 by Legrand (191 2) and others. 



The discovery of amoebae in post-dysenteric liver abscesses was soon 

 confirmed by Osier (1890) in America, whose observations led Council- 

 man and Lafleur (1891) to undertake an extensive investigation into the 

 pathology of "amoebic dysentery" and "amoebic abscess of the liver" 



* Although called " giant " forms, their size is given as " o'oooi 5 — o'ooo222 mm." but 

 the figures — stated to be magnified about 100 diameters — show much larger bodies. 

 No structure can be made out in them, and none is described. It is not stated that 

 the " amoebae" were motile when alive. 



+ Compare, for example, the findings of Wenyon and O'Connor (1917). 



