THE AMERICAN 
MONTHLY 
MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 
Vou. VIII. JANUARY, 1887. No. 1. 
The malarial germ of Laveran. By Geo. M. Sternberg, M.D.* 
The view that malarial fever was due to the presence of micro-organisms 
was suggested by Lucretius (95 B. C.) and was ably advocated in this country 
by Dr. Mitchell in 1859. The specific germ was announced by Klebs, 1879, 
and Tommasi-Crudeli (1879), as Baczllus malarie, and observations were 
made by a number of independent observers which tended to confirm the belief 
in Bacillus malarte@ as the demonstrated disease germ, entitled to rank with 
the spirillum of relapsing fever, the anthrax bacillus, and the tubercle bacillus. 
Soon after the publication of Klebs and Crudeli the writer instituted a series 
of control experiments in New Orleans, with the following results :—Organ- 
isms were found in the swamp-mud and gutters of New Orleans, some of which 
closely resembled the Baczllus malaria, but these, when injected hypoder- 
mically into rabbits, did not produce malarial fevers resembling the paludic 
fevers of human subjects. 
Notwithstanding confirmatory evidence published by several Italian observ- 
ers, the writer remained skeptical, and in 1884, in his work on malaria and 
malarial diseases, was not prepared to entitle the more recently discovered germ 
of Laveran to any greater confidence. The discoveries of Laveran were inves- 
tigated by a number of students, and among them by Marchiafava and Celli, who 
had formerly confirmed the Laczllus malarie doctrine, but were converted 
to Laveran’s view as a result of their investigation. During a recent visit to 
Rome these investigators demonstrated this germ of Laveran to the writer, 
and there is good reason to believe that it is the long-sought malarial germ. 
For a long time there have been recognized dark-colored granules and irreg- 
ular masses of pigment in the blood and tissues as regularly present in victims 
of malarial disease. Virchow, Frerichs, and Mosler believe that these are 
formed in the spleen, where they occur in large quantities, the older view 
being that they were formed in the blood. According to Arnstein the pigment 
granules are formed by some destructive change in the hemoglobine of red 
corpuscles, and they are taken up by the white corpuscles, in whose interior 
they are found; finally, these are destroyed in the spleen, and their burden 
deposited. 
Recent investigations go to show that this explanation of melanemia is 
correct, or, at least, that granules are formed in the blood in large numbers 
during fatal attacks of malarial fever, and they may be plainly seen in the 
interior of the red blood corpuscles lying in capillaries of the brain, liver, and 
other organs (see fig. 1). These granules not only are seen in the red corpus- 
cle, but within a hyaline body which lies within the corpuscle (fig. 2). In 
the original figure both the hyaline body and the granules are shown within 
the corpuscle, but this is not shown in the wood-cut. 
A recent paper by Drs. Councilman and Abbott} confirms the observations 
* Abridged from original article in Medical Record, p. 489 and p. 517, May 1 and 8, 1886, 
+ Contribution to pathology—malarial fever—Am. Jour. Med. Sci., Apl., 1885. 
