122 
THE LIFE-CYCLE OF SPIROCHAETA 
GALLINARUM. 
AN APPRECIATION AND A CRITICISM OF DR E. HINDLE’S RECENT 
PAPER. 
By ANDREW BALFOUR, M.D., B.Sc., F.R.C.P, D.P.H. 
Director, Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories, 
Gordon College, Khartoum. 
I HAVE been following the valuable contributions which Hindle has 
recently been making to the literature of spirochaetosis and I have been 
specially interested in his paper on the above subject which appeared in 
Parasitology, vol. iv. p. 463. P wish to make a few comments upon some 
of his findings and conclusions. 
The peculiar form of transverse division which he describes probably 
explains why there have been such conflicting views as regards the 
division of this species of spirochaete. While I cannot say that I have 
ever actually witnessed transverse division in the case of the Sudan 
fowl spirochaete I have certainly seen forms such as he represents in 
Fig. 1, p. 464. Indeed I have illustrated several of these forms both in 
the Third and Fourth Reports of these laboratories. 
I am particularly pleased to find that he has been able to confirm 
my observations on granule shedding because, as I have frequently 
remarked, I believe this phenomenon to be of very considerable 
significance and to be present in other than spirochaetal conditions. 
His name “coccoid bodies” for these granules seems useful but surely 
he is in error when he says, 
“The fact that these coccoid forms are produced in large numbers 
after drug treatment, or when the parasites are in unfavourable 
conditions, has caused them to be regarded previously as merely the 
result of granular disintegration.” 
So long ago as 1907 Breinl observed Sp. duttoni breaking up into 
small red granules and stated that it was out of these that the ne\v 
