23 THE AMOEBAE LIVING IN MAN 



Casagrandi and Barbagallo (1895) had done before him. I regard 

 "amoeba dysenteriae " Councilman and Lafleur, 1891, as ruled out 

 because it is a synonym of " Amoeba coli " Losch, and in addition not 

 a valid name, but a descriptive term. Similarly the name " Amoeba coli 

 felis," employed for the same organism by Quincke and Roos (1893), 

 is not a valid Linnaean name, but a trinominal descriptive phrase.* 

 This name has no status in zoological nomenclature. There are three 

 other possible early names for the dysentery amoeba — "Amoeba 

 urogenitalis " Baelz, 1883, Amoeba vaginalis Blanchard, 1885, and 

 Amoeba Intesthialls Blanchard, 1885. The first two of these depend 

 upon the identification of the amoebae found in human urine, which 

 is such a large subject that I shall devote a separate section to it {vide 

 infra, p. 125). I conclude there, however, that neither of these names 

 should be employed. The other name — A. intestinalis Blanchard — 

 cannot properly be used for any organism, I think. Blanchard (1885) 

 introduced it for some amoebae which are stated by Leuckart (1879) 

 to have been seen by Sonsino in the stools of a child suffering from 

 dysentery. They are merely stated to have been 8-10 times the size 

 of a red blood corpuscle and therefore apparently larger than Losch's 

 amoebae. They may have been the dysentery amoeba, but they are not 

 identifiable. 



Whilst it is true that the terms A. coli and A. dysenteriae were some- 

 times used correctly as zoological names, yet they were never used 

 with clear specific conceptions before the time of Schaudinn. We 

 constantly find the name "A. coll" used indiscriminately for two 

 different species. It ought not to have been — after Quincke and Roos, 

 Kovics, and Casagrandi and Barbagallo — but nevertheless it was. Thus 

 we find even so competent a zoologist as Doflein (1901) describing 

 "A. coli Losch" as the one and only amoeba from the human intestine 

 — illustrated by Losch's figures of the free forms of E. histolytica and 

 Grassi's figure of the cyst of E. coli. 1 therefore regard Schaudinn's 

 name for the dysentery amoeba as the first proper zoological desig- 

 nationf of the species; and I shall, accordingly, continue to call this 

 organism Entamoeba histolytica Schaudinn, 1903. Whether right or 

 wrong, this name is the only one which can now be used without 

 creating chaos in the nomenclature of the amoebae of man. 



The chief synonyms of E. histolytica are given in the list which heads 

 this section. A few explanations may be given here, however, in justifi- 

 cation of the inclusion of certain names. 



Amoeba lobosa var. coli is the name proposed by Celli and Fiocca 

 (1894(1), in accordance with their system of nomenclature, for Losch's 

 amoeba. It is therefore a synonym of E. histolytica. "Amoeba lobosa " 

 is not a proper name for any amoeba, and Losch's organism cannot 

 therefore be classified as a variety of a non-existent species. " Entamoeba 

 Schaudinni " Lesage (1908) is presumably a name intended, by this 



* Like " Bacillus coli communis" and many other bacteriological names which are 

 clearly not formed in accordance with the rules of nomenclature. 



t Though his description is not, of course, by any means the first. Schaudinn 

 himself considered that the best account was that of Jiirgens (1902) — who did not 

 name the amoebae, and later (Jiirgens, 1903) adopted Schaudinn's nomenclature. 

 Schaudinn ignored or underrated the work of many of his predecessors — e.g., Kovdcs, 

 Roos, etc. 



