30 
Bodies that may be Mistaken for Parasites 
1. Platelets. —A single platelet lying on a red 
cell is often taken for a parasite. It is often quite 
round, but it is granular in appearance, and stains 
uniformly red or blotchy purple. There is no distinct 
separation into red nucleus, white vacuole and blue 
protoplasm. 
Platelets lying free may show a great variety of 
shape, round, oval, sausage-shaped, in masses from 
the size of one-fifth to three or four times that of a 
red cell. They often, too, appear to have a clear 
outline, but the resemblance to a parasite is only 
superficial. There are no distinct areas, and, further, 
free parasites are practically never seen. Again, 
crescentic masses of platelets are often taken for 
crescents ; but, again, there is no red chromatin and 
separate blue protoplasm, and no pigment. 
2. Stained Vacuoles.- —Artefacts of this kind 
generally occur in almost every cell in some portion 
of the field while quite absent in others. This is, of 
course, not the case with parasites. They are granular 
and much like a platelet, but lack the £ red, white and 
blue ? of a parasite. 
3. Leucocytes. —Are not uncommonly mistaken 
for large forms of parasites, e.g ., gametes, but if it is 
remembered that the greatest amount of chromatin 
in a gamete is always quite small, while, comparatively, 
the nucleus of a leucocyte is immense, this mistake 
cannot be made. 
4. Basophilia of Red Cell. —Occasionally mis¬ 
taken for a red cell shewing Schiiffner’s dots, containing 
a simple tertian parasite. Closer observation shews 
that the punctate cell contains no parasite. 
5. Normoblasts. —The red cell contains a nucleus 
