COUNCILMANIA LAFLEURI. 



311 



lafleuri in honor of the two investigators who first clearly demon- 

 strated the pathogenicity of the amoeba which they called Amoeba 

 dy sentence and which Schaudinn, in ignorance of their work, 

 later named Entamoeba histolytica. 



This new amceba was found by us in stools wholly free from 

 Endamoeba dy sentence, especially in blood and mucus strands, 

 during sixteen weeks almost continuous daily examinations. It 

 was present in large numbers on every day but three, and free 

 stages were obtained in liquid stools, especially in mucus, and 

 strands of cellular tissue therein. Continued intestinal dis- 

 turbance accompanied this case of infection which occurred in a 

 returned soldier from overseas who had been four months in the 

 hospital in France with dysentery and had had two treatments 

 here for Endamoeba dysenteric, with emetin bismuth iodide, the 

 last with salvarsan treatment also. After the second treatment 

 this amceba entirely disappeared. Five other cases of infection 

 have been observed by us. Amoebae which are probably Council- 

 mania appear in the figures of Casagrandi and Barbagallo (1897), 

 Prowazek (191 1), Werner (in Prowazek's "Handbuch") (191 1), 

 Walker and Sellards (1913), Mathis and Mercier (1917), Clauri 

 (191 7), and possibly elsewhere. It is probably widely distributed 

 as a human parasite. 



In the free stage it has survived for five hours in the mobile 

 condition in the thermos bottle. It is extraordinarily mobile, 

 throws out perfectly hyaline, broadly rounded, single pseudopodia 

 with expulsive suddenness and travels rapidly through obstacles. 

 Its cytoplasm is gorged with food vacuoles including bacteria, and 

 cysts of Chilomastix. In the mucus strands it was frequently 

 filled with red blood corpuscles. 



In the encysted stage it runs through 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-cell 

 stages. We have seen one 12-cell cyst. Most of the cysts, ex- 

 cept in liquid stools, are in the 8-cell stage when discharged in the 

 faeces. 



The cysts are exceptionally thick- walled, are double-contoured, 

 tend to be ellipsoidal or spheroidal rather than spherical, and 

 range from 11 to 34 /z, generally 16-20 /jl, in longest diameter. 

 Some of the cysts are found to have a chromophile protoplasmic 



