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Coccidia parasitic in man 
testinalis and Entamoeba coli. This supposition is confirmed by Grassi's later 
writings. He there says definitely (Grassi, 1882, 1883) that the “ special cor¬ 
puscleswhich he had previously described in human faeces were not coccidia. 
The larger forms were ‘"resting amoebae ”; of the identity of the smaller he is 
still in doubt. From his figures and description, however, it is certain that 
these were, for the most part, cysts of Lamblia, which Grassi and Schewiakoff 
(1888) identified and described at a later date. 
It appears perfectly clear, therefore, that the “coccidia" discovered in 
human faeces by Grassi have no foundation on fact. Grassi himself, indeed, 
has denied that he ever found coccidia in man. He says (cf. Grassi, 1883, 
p. 442) that some of the “corpuscles’" which he had earlier described were 
only “perhaps related to the coccidia 55 : and he is indignant with Biitschli (1881) 
for having said that “their coccidial nature is still pretty doubtful."’ Biitschli, 
he says, had credited him with believing that they were coccidia in order to 
have the pleasure of making this retort. Nevertheless, there is good evidence 
that Grassi originally did believe that the “corpuscles'" in question were 
coccidia 1 , although he satisfied himself later that they were not. The matter 
is clinched by his own statement some years later that he “has never found 
intestinal coccidia in man "’ (Grassi, 1888, p. 5). 
It is therefore certain, I think, both from his own testimonv and from a 
v * 
careful consideration of his publications, that no real cases of human coccidiosis 
were ever discovered or described bv Grassi. 
Kunstler and Pitres s case. The case described by Kunstler and Pitres 
(1884, 1884 a) differs from all the others which we have to consider, in that the 
parasites were found, not in the liver, gut, or faeces, but in the pleural cavity. 
The patient was a man of 27 serving on board a ship plying between Bordeaux 
and Senegal. He entered hospital at the former place, suffering from pleurisy. 
About 2 litres of pus were evacuated from the pleural cavity by tapping. 
Examined microscopically, it was found to contain “a large number of ovoid 
or fusiform corpuscles,—homogeneous, of hyaline appearance, and swimming 
freely in the liquid of the preparation or enclosed, to the number of ten to 
twenty or more, in clear and relatively voluminous vesicles. The isolated 
corpuscles measure usually from 18 to 20/x in length; exceptionally, smaller 
(8 to 10 n) or much larger ones (60 to 100 p) are found. " The “corpuscles’" 
displayed a “finely striated envelope,” and a central body believed to be a 
nucleus. In the opinion of their discoverers they were probably “the falciform 
bodies of psorosperms”—that is, the merozoites or sporozoites of a sporozoon 
—“living parasitically in the pleural cavity.” 
1 This is not only implied by the title of his paper (Grassi, 1879), but is distinctly stated in it. 
After discussing the nature of his “corpuscles,” he concludes by saying that he is “forced to the 
conviction that they are psorosperms.” “Ed io li giudico psorospermi dell’ uomo.... I psorospermi 
da me descritti entrano nella sottofamiglia dei psorospermi oviformi-sferici ” (p. 635). Allowing 
for the language of the period, he could hardly have expressed the opinion that they were coccidia 
with greater clearness. 
