Il6 THE ANIMAL PARASITES OF MAN 



are herbivorous, .the idea of a direct transmission through eating- 

 infected flesh may be summarily dismissed ; experiments, such as 

 the inoculations carried out by Kasparek, 1 have also yielded 

 negative results. Moreover, the spores have not much power of 

 resistance ; for instance, they perish in the gastric juices. 



FIG. 61. Spores of Sarcocystis tenella, Raill. 1000/1.) 

 (a) Fresh with the polar capsule ; (b) stained (after Laveran 

 and Mesnil). 



We are still unacquainted with the manner in which the enor- 

 mous infection of the same host comes to pass. That which 

 Pfeiffer says on the matter is altogether hypothetical. The CLASS- 

 IFICATION OF THE SARCOSPORIDIA as proposed by R. Blanchard, and 

 which was based on their various habitats, can no longer hold good, 

 because the same species may occur in the muscles as well as in 

 the connective tissue ; for the present the few species that are 

 known may be placed in one genus (Sarcocystis, R. Leuck.). 



THE SARCOSPORIDIA OBSERVED IN MAN. 



(1) Lindemann (Ueb. d. hyg. Bdtg. d. Gregarinen in Dtsche. Zlschr. 

 f. Staatsarzneikde, 1868) found on the valves and in the myocardium 

 of a person that had died of dropsy certain brownish masses, 

 3 mm. in length and 1-5 mm. in breadth which he regarded as 

 gregarines. If these were actually independent animal organisms 

 it may be suggested that they were Sarcosporidia. 



(2) Rosenberg (Ein Befund von Psorosp. in Herzmusk. d. 

 Menschen in Ztschr. /. Hygiene, 1892, xi., p. 435) found a cyst 

 5 mm. in length and 2 mm. in breadth in a papillary muscle of 

 the valvula mitralis of a woman, 40 years of age, who had died 

 from pleuritis and endocarditis. The cyst contained no scolex nor 

 booklets of taenia ; numerous small refracting bodies, round> oval 

 or kidney-shaped, were found in a daughter cyst, as well as 

 sickle-shaped bodies. The description hardly appears to indicate 

 Sarcosporidia. 



1 It may incidentally be mentioned that the Sarcosporidia contain a toxin (sarco- 

 cystine) that has a serious effect on warm-blooded animals. More on this subject 

 can be learned from L. Pfeiffer and from Laveran and Mesnil (De la sarcocystine, toxins 

 d. sarcospor. In. C. R. soc. bioL, Paris, 1899 [10], vi. p. 311). 



