ON A NEW RHIZOPOD PARASITE OF MAN (AMEBA 



MIURAI N. SP.) 



By Prof I. I.ÏIMA, Ph. D. 



The Rhizopod parasite of man, reported on in this paper, apparently repre- 

 sents a hitherto undescribed species of Amœbsea. I take pleasure in proposing to 

 call it Amoeba miurai after Prof. K. Miurv of the Medical College, Imperial 

 University of Tokyo, who first discovered it and kindly handed over to me the 

 materials for study and description. The patient, who harbored the parasite, 

 was a married woman, Yuki Ishiwatari by name and twenty-six years of age. 

 She resided in the Prefecture of Kanagawa until she was taken into the Univer- 

 sity Hospital at the end of November last year. Her disease consisted at first in 

 abdominal tumors which could be felt from outside andin ascites-like accumula- 

 tion of fluid in the abdominal cavity. Later the affliction increased the degree of 

 malignance and extended itself into the left pleural cavity. The patient finally 

 succumbed in August of the present year. As the result of clinical and post 

 mortem examinations Prof. Miura has arrived at the conclusion, that he had to 

 do with a case of yeritvw lis and pit uriti» endotheliomalom. For the details of this 

 case from medical standpoint I refer those interested to a forthcoming paper of 

 Prof. Miur\ himself, which will appear hi the " Mittheilungen aus der medicini- 

 schen Facultät der Kaiserlichen Universität zu Tokyo." 



It was in the serous fluid-accumulation of the peritoneal as well as of the 

 pleural cavity that the Amoebae were found in abundance. Only during a period 

 of about two days, shortly before the patient's death, they were also present in the 

 faeces concomitantly with hemorrhage in the intestine ; at other times the feces 

 were free of them. 



The discovery reminded us at once of Lcydenia ffummìpara Schaudinn, a 

 human parasitic Rhizopod discovered two years ago in Berlin under almost iden- 

 tical circumstances.* However, it was evident without going into discriminating 



* v. Leyden and Schaudinn : Sitz ber. d. k pr. Ak«d. d Wiss. Berlin, 1893, XXXIX. 



