112 TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE 



processes or buds are formed at the periphery of this 

 rounded body, and these gradually increase in size, the 

 chromatin divides, and half enters each of these buds. 

 The increase in size in the buds is by absorption of the 

 original protoplasmic mass, which is reduced to a mere 

 thread connecting the two bodies, and this finally is 

 absorbed and the two pear-shaped bodies lie free in the 

 red corpuscle. They may remain in the red corpuscle 

 for some time, and when they escape enter in turn other 

 red corpuscles, before they again become amoeboid and 

 divide and so repeat the cycle. 



Piroplasmata occur in most of the domesticated animals, 

 and cause serious disease, and frequently death, in cattle, 

 sheep, horses and dogs. . They have been described in 

 man, but their occurrence is very doubtful. 



By some observers Leishman-Donovan bodies, now 

 known to be a resting stage of a flagellate, were con- 

 sidered as piroplasmata. In all the diseases of domes- 

 ticated animals pyrexia occurs, not showing definite 

 periodicity. A common character is haemoglobinuria, so 

 much so that the popular name of the disease in cattle is 

 " redwater fever," in sheep " heart fever." In dogs the 

 disease they cause is called epidemic jaundice, on account 

 of the haemotogenous colouring of the conjunctiva from 

 the haemolysis. Although haemolysis is a common result 

 of piroplasma infection, haemoglobinuria is by no means 

 always a prominent symptom. Redwater does not 

 occur, for example, in Rhodesian .or East Coast cattle 

 fever, and although piroplasmosis is common in cattle 

 throughout the East, yet haemoglobinuria is rarely met 

 with except in animals suffering from serious intercurrent 

 disease, such as rinderpest, or among those imported 

 from countries where piroplasmata do not occur. 



An infection with piroplasma in cattle appears to last 

 during the whole life of the animal, but the clinical 

 evidence of the presence of the parasites disappears, and 

 though the animals harbour the parasites in small 

 numbers they seem to have acquired a degree of toler- 



