430 Eimeria n. sp. in Man 
\\ hen I saw the preparations it struck me that there were also a lot 
ol small protozoa, probably of quite different species. Now it turned out 
that the pots used to be washed in a little river. Consequently, nearlv 
each pot contained a small quantity of water abounding with protozoa, 
most of which belonged to the genus Paramecium. After adding to the 
preparation under the microscope a drop of a suspension of erythrocytes 
one saw that the peristomal cilia of the Paramecia caused a stream, by 
means of which the red corpuscles—amongst other small particles—were 
engulfed in the mouth. 
A bacteriological examination of another motion of the child passed 
afterwards into a sterile Petri dish showed the bacilli of Shiga-Kruse. 
B. The cysts are ingested with food or water and pass unaltered (or only 
slightly altered) through the alimentary canal. Thus they appear in the stools 
where eventually they may continue their development. 
Such is, for example, the case with Bodo ( u Prowazekia”) cysts. On the 
East Coast I can get Prowazekia ’ only out of the faeces of people who drink 
unfiltered water. 
In the case here described I think this supposition rather speculative, 
though the fact that a certain number of cysts proved to be dead, might 
seem to support it. We would have then to accept, in the first place, a thorough 
pollution of water or certain food-stuffs wdth animal faeces (or possibly with 
other animal excretions), e.g. the faeces of aquatic animals, or of cockroaches, 
flies, ants, mice, or rats ; in the second place, an abnormally good preservation 
of the great majority of the cysts on their passage through the alimentary 
canal of Mr C., i.e. a very remarkable resistance of the wall of the ripe oocysts 
to the digestive action of the human gastric and pancreatic juices. 
That these two conditions, however, should both be satisfied is rather 
improbable, especially as I have never met with similar cvsts in the stools or 
intestines of the above-mentioned animals. Neither have I been able to find 
any reference, in the literature at my disposal 1 , to an identical form in animals. 
The oocysts of all other species are smaller, at least as far as the descriptions 
are clear enough to rely on and the dimensions given are exact. 
As to the second condition; of course it is not impossible that the wall of 
the oocyst should be soluble in the digestive juices of the specific host only. 
This would represent then a high degree of physiological adaptation. But 
the facts known about the eggs of entozoa and the cysts of amoebae do not 
indicate the existence of such subtle differences in this respect. 
But so far as I am aware we cannot deny this possibility ( water or food 
contamination ) altogether; in any case it is prudent to bear it in mind, and in 
certain cases it may prove to be worth a thorough investigation. 
C. The Eimeria is really parasitic in the described case, e.g. as a parasite of 
the epithelium of the small bowel. (This last suggestion is probable because 
of the absence of liver-symptoms and because of the behaviour of Eimeria in 
The common Handbooks; Arch. f. Protistenkunde; Centralbl. f. Bakt.; Parasitology. 
