54 PROTOZOA AND DISEASE 



involve its death, but that the minutest part the intimate mixture 

 of nuclear and cytoplasmic matter that such chromidial bodies 

 consist of has all the potential of a perfect cell. 



In conclusion, I may quote what I have written elsewhere of 

 Guarnieri's bodies : 



' i. They are so far specific to variola and vaccinia that their 

 appearance after inoculation of a cornea is the best test of the 

 activity of vaccine lymph ; and, an important practical fact, their 

 appearance in an epithelium of a test-animal may be used as an aid 

 to diagnosis in cases suspected of being small-pox. 



' 2. They have been cultivated in a long series of corneae, and 

 from the last a clinically typical vaccination of a child has been 

 done. 



' 3. If they were the products of a degeneration peculiar to 

 variola, then the outcome of connected serial observations would be 

 to show that there are products of degeneration which from day to 

 day undergo a regular growth and development, with numerical 

 increase and changes in structure, such changes being, in any 

 number of similar observations (vaccination and examination of 

 tissues at stated periods in sequence), constantly repeated, and at 

 corresponding periods of time. If we imagine a process akin to 

 crystallization to underlie the phenomena, it may be objected that 

 amoeboid movement has been described in them by competent 

 observers, and that no known crystals or crystalloids behave as 

 they do.' 



