ORGANIZATION AND VITAL PHENOMENA. 187 



was abundantly found in the ill-smelling, thin, fluid stools, which also 

 showed the usual contents of dysenteric stools — i.e., besides remains 

 of food — red and white blood corpuscles, detached intestinal epi- 

 thelium, and cell fragments, and a great number of bacteria, micrococci, 

 and monads. There was, however, no possibihty of confounding the 

 Amoeba with other structures. In appearance, size, and mode of motion, 

 they were sufficiently distinguished from the surrounding elements. 



Although this case stands as yet alone, we can well believe that 

 the occurrence of parasitic Amoeboe in similar intestinal diseases is 

 both frequent and widely distributed. I am corroborated in this sup- 

 position, not only by the above-cited and questionable observation of 

 Lambl, but also by an oral communication from my esteemed friend 

 ■Dr. Sonsino, in Cairo, who found large numbers of an equally unde- 

 niable Amoeba in the intestinal mucus of a child who had died of 

 dysentery. Its size was from 8 to 10 times that of the blood cor- 

 puscles. Since the forms observed by Losch were only 5 to 8 times 

 as large as the red blood corpuscles, we may perhaps conclude that 

 the Egyptian Amoeba was of a different species. Steinberg also alleges 

 the discovery of an Amosba (A. buccalis) in the mucus covering the 

 teeth of man (vide postea). ^ 



One can form some approximate conception of the immense 

 number of AmcebcB hving together in the intestine when one learns 

 that Losch often saw, with a magnifying power of 500, from sixty to 

 seventy specimens in the same field of vision ; and Fig. 94 (repro- 

 duced as closely as possible from nature) shows by no means the 

 most tMckly crowded portion. 



The movements which first attracted the attention of the ob- 

 server are described as follows : — " On any part of the surface of the 

 body indifferently, a small, roundish, transparent, glassy projection 

 appears, sharply divided from the rest of the granular protoplasm. 

 This is either rapidly retracted, or, increasing quickly in size, it forms 

 eventually a finger-like process, whose length approximates to the 

 diameter of the rest of the body. This process is finally drawn 

 in again, only to reappear at another point ; or it may be that the 

 granular protoplasm suddenly flows into it and fills it up. In 

 this way the form of the whole animal changes, it becomes oval, 

 elongated, or, where there are several processes, irregular. The 

 processes are constantly blunt, never filiform, or running to a point. 



as developmental stages in the life-history of a Myxomycete, which he calls Proto- 

 myxomyces copnnarius (" On the Development of certain Microscopic Organisms occurring 

 in the Intestinal Canal," Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci., vol. xxi., pp. 234-290, 1881).— E. L.] 

 ^ [Grassi speaks also {loc. cit.) of an Amisba dentcdis observed by him in three cases. 

 It is said to resemble A. coli, and, like this, to become quiescent at low temperatures 



(below 25° c. ).-R. L.] Digitized by Microsoft® 



