G. H. F. Nutt all 
59 
gut, attaining their maximum development in three days 1 . He also 
noted the presence of Crithidia in the intestines of lice. Spirochaetes 
were found in the insects’ ovaries and Malpighian tubes, and they were 
expelled with fluid exuded from the oral aperture when the lice were 
compressed. Spirochaetes were not found in ova laid by infected insects. 
Sergent and Foley (hi. 1908, pp. 174-176), impelled by the publi¬ 
cation of Mackie, issued a preliminary note upon their researches. 
They reported upon an epidemic of relapsing fever occurring during the 
winter at Beni-Ounif de Figuig, Sud Oranais, Algeria. Body-lice were 
observed in large numbers on nearly all the patients who were examined, 
the persons affected being mostly poor, living promiscuously, sleeping 
on mats and using heavy coverings in common, hardly ever washing 
or changing their clothes. Many of these persons showed self-inflicted 
scratches upon their bodies due to the presence of vermin. 
The authors were able to exclude mosquitoes, Cimex, and Argas 
persicus as carriers on epidemiological grounds. S. recurrentis was seen 
to disappear rapidly in Cimex, Argas and Pediculus that had fed upon 
infected blood. Some non-motile spirochaetes were discovered in the 
coelomic fluid of Argas up to the sixth day, but they did not reappear 
(as do S. gallinarum) when the ticks were subsequently placed at a 
temperature of 24-37° C. After biting relapsing fever patients in 
Algeria, the bugs, ticks, and lice were taken to Paris, where, after a 
period of six days from the time of feeding, the arthropods were 
crushed and their substance inoculated subcutaneously into monkeys. 
A positive result was only obtained with a monkey that had been 
inoculated with one of the crushed lice; following upon an incubation 
period of eight days, the monkey died of relapsing fever on the third 
day of illness. 
Smith (1909) in Egypt, observed an outbreak in which lice were 
common on the bodies of the affected persons. Spirochaetes were 
found in stained films prepared from lice, examined within four hours 
of their feeding on infective blood. He failed to infect a monkey by 
means of lice taken from the patients. Smith (1910, pp. 374-375) 
subsequently reported that he had failed to transmit different strains 
of spirochaetes (from New York, Egypt, Morocco) by the bites of infected 
lice. He sought to transmit spirochaetes in this manner from rat to 
1 This is contrary to subsequent experience in Northern Africa. Involuntarily one 
asks oneself did Mackie perchance mistake the spermatozoa of the louse for spirochaetes 
as Klodnitzky (1908) did in the case of Cimex (vide Nuttall, Parasitology, i. p. 144). I 
have twice, since that date, saved others from making a similar mistake. 
