226 The Philippine Journal of Science 1918 



methylene blue the trichomonads disappeared and with them 

 the diarrhoea. Soon afterward the patient left for the United 

 States, and the case passed out of observation. 



Prentiss (42) reports several cases of infection with an or- 

 ganism he describes as Cercomonas hominis. He describes it 

 as a "flagellated protozoon, bluntly pointed at both extremities, 

 with a thin flagellum at one end, which by waving actively im- 

 parts motion to the organism similar to that of a tadpole." This 

 organism he has found in the fasces of a number of his patients 

 in the southwestern United States (he writes from El Paso, 

 Texas) . This parasite was found in the fasces of patients having 

 diarrhoea — some chronic, others acute. Entamoeba histolytica 

 was not found. Some of the cases assumed a severe form, and 

 two terminated fatally with symptoms suggestive more of an 

 acute catarrh than of ulceration. In one fatal case that was 

 necropsied, the intestine showed no trace of ulceration. The 

 author says no other cause of death could be found. The iden- 

 tity of the organism seems to be in doubt here. 



Chatter jee, (8) however, is more explicit. He boldly desig- 

 nates flagellate dysentery as "a distinct entity." He studied 

 seventy cases in India and tabulates his results in Table I as 

 follows : 



Table I. 



Organism. 



Character of stool. 



Num- 1 

 ber of 

 eases 

 observ- 

 ed. 



Monocercomonas ._ _ 



Prowazekia 



Macrostoma 



Lamblia 



Pentatrichomonns. 





S 

 2 



18 

 15 

 32 



do 





do •—. 



do __ 





He concludes that Macrostoma, Lamblia, and Pentatrichomo- 

 nas cause intestinal trouble. Monocercomonas and Prowazekia 

 he regards as harmless, pointing out their occurrence in cholera 

 motions. To this latter statement I may add, as I have already 

 said, that the systematic position of the cercomonads is uncer- 

 tain, 4 and Prowazekia is thought by many to occur as a contami- 

 nation of faeces or urine and not to be a parasite. 



Nearly every writer on tropical medicine has spoken of diar- 

 rhoea as a concomitant of flagellate infection. Musgrave(38) 



* Monocercomonas, according to Alexeieff, has four anterior flagella. 

 Sometimes these are of equal length, or two may he shorter and two longer. 



