(63) 
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PIBOPLASMA PABVUM 
(PEOTOZOA) IN THE VAEIOUS OEGANS OP CATTLE. 
By Dr. E. Gonder. 
(Eead June 15, 1910.) 
Since the investigations of E. Koch on East Coast Fever of cattle in 
East Africa, the cause of this disease has formed the subject of much 
discussion. 
At present there exist two different views. Some investigators hold 
that East Coast Fever is due to an invisible organism, others declare 
P. parvum to be the cause, but neither party has been able to prove to the 
satisfaction of the other that their investigations were free of errors. This 
is due to the fact that the cattle of Africa are, as a rule, infected with 
various parasites; with P. higeminum and the more or less harmless 
parasite P. mutans, which, morphologically, is very difficult to distinguish 
from P. parvum. Moreover, there is much controversy on the so-called 
plasma granules or Koch's bodies, also known as blue bodies, which are 
found in the organs of cattle suffering from East Coast Fever. 
In this short publication, which will be succeeded by a more detailed 
one, I wish to communicate some investigations on the blue bodies of 
Koch which will throw some light on their nature. For the present I 
shall leave out details, neither can I enter into the literature on the 
subject, which will have to be considered in the more exhaustive report. 
Experiments were carried out since March of this year in the Trans- 
vaal Veterinary Bacteriological Laboratory. The material used consisted 
in cattle whose origin we know and in ticks with whose history we were 
fully acquainted ; accordingly double infections could be excluded from the 
very start. The ticks placed on control cattle imported direct from 
England proved that they were exclusively infected with East Coast 
Fever. In addition to this, Dr. Theiler gave me permission to utilise the 
cattle used in various experiments on East Coast Fever which had been 
infected experimentally through the implantation and inoculation of 
different organs. For my zoological studies, therefore, a considerable 
amount of material was available. 
