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184 Drs Fantham and Porter, Notes on Certain Protozoa 
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Notes on Certain Protozoa which may be found in cases of 
Dysentery from the Mediterranean War Zone. By H. B. FANTHAM, — 
D.Se. Lond., M.A., Christ’s College, Cambridge, and Liverpool 
School of Tropical Medicine, and ANNIE Porter, D.Sc. Lond., 
Beit Memorial Research Fellow, Quick Laboratory, Cambridge. 
[Read 22 November 1915.] 
At the present time, when the conservation of life is so 
important, 11 may be well to give a short account of some — 
of the protozoal organisms associated with dysentery, more 
especially as the literature relating to many of these parasites is 
scattered or in relatively little-known journals, some of which 
are published in South America. These notes are based on 
personal knowledge and examination of cases from the Medi- 
terranean regions during the present war, and are presented in 
the hope that they may be of service to those having charge of 
dysenteric cases from those parts. 
Briefly, the chief types of dysentery may be classified as 
bacillary and protozoal. The former cannot be dealt with here. 
Dysenteries of protozoal origin may be grouped as amoebic, 
flagellate and ciliate. Cases of multiple infections of these 
parasites with each other or with bacilli causing dysentery may 
be encountered. 
Amoebic Dysentery. 
The best known of the protozoal dysenteries is that due to 
Entamoeba histolytica. This organism is polymorphic. The life- 
cycle, as now accepted, has been worked out more particularly by 
Darling, and James and Deeks in the Panama Canal zone, while 
its successful treatment by emetine has been brought forward 
chiefly by Rogers. 
Entamoeba histolytica is found in freshly voided stools that 
are usually blood-stained and contain strings of mucus. The 
entamoebae when active show pseudopodia, at first chiefly com- 
posed of ectoplasm. The endoplasm usually contains a number 
of red blood corpuscles and other débris. The nucleus of the 
form of this organism that used to be termed JZ. tetragena may 
show a karyosome and a centriole. 
The Entamoeba multiples by binary fission and also by 
schizogony, four merozoites being produced. Encystment occurs, 
and the round cysts finally produced measure 12m to 15m in 
