216 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
Expedition in Africa, considerable attention has been directed to the existence 
of a mycotic form of splenomegaly. 
Nanta, Pinoy, and Gruny ! first reported upon five cases of infectious spleno- 
megaly observed in Algeria, in all of which the spleen was removed. These 
spleens, they stated, presented characteristic lesions which could be observed 
with the naked eye, and consisted of nodules one to two millimeters in diameter, 
of the color of ironrust. These were very hard and adherent to the splenic tissue, 
from which one was able to separate them only by tearing away the little vessel 
around which they are formed. Histologically the entire splenic tissue presented 
remarkable granulomatous transformation with slight sclerosis. The nodules 
referred to, which are perivascular, were made up of a dense sclerotic growth 
infiltrated with enormous giant cells and filled with ferruginous pigment. The 
most characteristic feature histologically was the occurrence of long bands or 
ribbons five to fifteen microns wide, either straight or slightly waving, sometimes 
refracting and colorless, sometimes stained like bundles of connective tissue in 
basophilic degeneration. Cultures from the spleens were sterile, but in the smears, 
and on section, one encountered two organisms; first a waving spirochaete, larger 
than the treponema, with loose spirals which are not numerous, and second a 
strepto-bacillus which was encountered only in the nodules and which formed 
filaments and cysts absolutely like the myxobacteria. 
In the second paper which they presented to the Academy of Sciences of 
Paris ? they reported upon a ‘“‘myxobacterian”’ splenomegaly and on the ‘‘syn- 
bacterium” isolated from cases of splenomegaly. They pointed out that the 
spirochaetes previously mentioned are not constant in the spleens, but the para- 
site Synbacterium splenomegaliae forms cysts and bands with clavae and spines 
analogous to those found by Magrou in experimental staphylococcice botryomyco- 
sis. They were thought to resemble somewhat a coccus or an encapsulated 
diplococcus which upon inoculation into the guinea pig killed the animal and 
produced congestion of the spleen and adrenals in which were found the encysted 
germs and sometimes long filamentous forms. 
In the third paper published by Pinoy and Nanta * in 1927, upon the common 
mycosis of the spleen in Algeria, they record that the pseudocysts found in cases 
of splenomegaly (in which the nodules previously described by Gamna are pres- 
ent) are either forms of fructification or perithecial appendages of the fungus, 
Sterigmatocystis nidulans. ‘They regard these cases of splenomegaly as infections 
with mycetozoa. They further believe that the fungus may penetrate through 
the skin‘ or through the intestine, and in doing so secondary infections of various 
bacteria might result and modify the clinical aspect of the conditions. They 
suggest the possibility of HKgyptian splenomegaly having the same mycotic 
etiology and insist upon the prevalence in Algeria of such a mycosis of the spleen. 
Pinoy * later proposed for the fungus isolated from the spleen the creation 
1 Nanta, Pinoy, and Gruny: Comptes Rendus Soe. Biol. (1926), XCIV, 635. 
2 Pinoy, E: C. R. Acad. des Sciences (1926), CLX XXII, 1429. 
3 Pinoy and Nanta: C. R. Acad. des Sciences (1927), CLX XXIV, 347. 
‘ Pinoy: Congress for Adv. Science in Constantine, cited in Supple., Mem. Inst. Oswaldo Cruz 
(Aug. 31, 1928), No. 1, p. 17. 
