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Chapter XXVI 
Genus Piroplasma 
Piroplasma .*—(= Babesia) are intra-corpuscular 
parasites, frequently pear-shaped as the generic name 
implies. They do not produce pigment, and multiply 
in the blood by dividing into two, and are transmitted 
by ticks, the transmission being sometimes hereditary ; 
i.e.y the mother tick feeding on a sick animal transmits 
the disease to some stage of her progeny, or the trans¬ 
mission is only from stage to stage, e.g., from larva to 
nymph or nymph to adult. 
i. P. bigeminum. —This disease of cattle, perhaps 
best known as Texas fever, is world-wide in its distri¬ 
bution. Infection may be latent with few or no 
symptoms. The acute form is characterised by : 
(i) High temperature ; (2) Haemoglobinuria in about 
eighty per cent, of cases, which, as in other forms of 
Piroplasma, may cease after some days ; (3) Icterus 
often absent ; (4) Anaemia, often extreme ; 
(5) Muscular palsies, staggering gait and other nervous 
symptoms ; (6) Constipation followed by bloody 
diarrhoea is not uncommon ; (7) Death in a week or 
less ; (8) The mortality is from sixty to eighty per cent. 
In the benign form of the disease there is anaemia, 
generally an absence of haemoglobinuria, and the 
duration is about a fortnight. 
Blood Examination .—Obtain blood by pricking the 
snout or a small vein in the ear. Generally one per 
* Those Piroplasmata shewing bacillary forms are placed by some authors in 
a new genus Tbeileria ; so that we should then have T. mutans,T. annul at a, T. equi , 
T. parva , T. cervi. 
