ON THE H/EMATOZOAN INFECTIONS OF BIRDS. 
By W. Gr. MacOallum, M. D. (Johns Hopkins), 
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. 
[From The Johns Eopkins Hospital Bulletin, No. 80, November, 1897.] [From The Johns Hopkins Hospital Hvlletin, No. 80, November, 1897.] 
ON THE H/EMATOZOAN INFECTIONS OF BIRDS. 
By W. G, MacCallum, M. D. (Johns Hopkins), 
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. 
In the adult examples of the Halteridium of Labbe, 
which occurs abundantly in crows in Ontario, Opie in 
1896-7 pointed out a distinction between two forms—a 
hyaline, non-staining form, and a form which is granular 
and takes on a comparatively dark stain with methylene 
blue—and suggested that the hyaline form alone might 
become flagellated. This distinction is readily confirmed, 
and it is a fact that only the hyaline forms become flagel- 
lated, the granular forms being extruded, and lying quiet 
as spheres beside the free nuclei of the red corpuscles which 
lately contained them. 
Motile fusiform bodies, identical with the “Yermiculus” 
described by Danilewsky in his “ Parasitologic comparee du 
Sang,” in 1889, are seen after fifteen or twenty-five minutes to 
develop from these quiet spheres and wander away. By care- 
ful watching of the two adult forms on extrusion from the 
corpuscle, it is seen that the flagella from the flagellated forms, 
tearing themselves free, constitute themselves fertilizing 
agents or spermatozoa, and proceeding directly to the granular 
sphere, wriggle about it. One only of these gains admission, 
and plunges itself into the sphere, which after some agitation 
of the pigment becomes quiet for a period of fifteen or twenty- 
five minutes, after which it puts out a conical process, which 
grows and draws the protoplasm into itself, until we finally 
have the fusiform body with a small pigmented appendage 
and refractive, nucleus-like body such as was described by 
Danilewsky as a “ Yermiculus.” The origin of the vermiculus 
is in every case exactly the same. 
In other words, we have a sexual process with a resulting 
motile form, occurring under unfavorable circumstances, and comparable with analogous processes observed in the lower 
plants and animals. 
It is thought that a similar process may be expected in the 
case of the human malaria. 
The vermiculus moves actively and has great powers of 
penetration by means of its pointed anterior end, with which 
it breaks up the red corpuscles in its path, and it is thought 
that possibly it may penetrate the intestinal wall and escape 
as the resistant form which gains the external world. This 
idea is supported by the finding of free organisms in the 
mucous contents of the intestine. 
In the organs, the connective tissue skeleton is one great 
storehouse of pigment, the branching cells being often loaded 
with foreign material. The endothelial cells are also very 
generally pigmented, and there occur in some of the organs, as 
well as in their blood-vessels, large makrophages loaded with 
pigment and other debris. Many large phagocytic cells occur 
in various organs which engulf whole corpuscles with their 
contained organisms. 
The organs found pigmented are, in the order of intensity of 
pigmentation, the spleen, liver, bone-marrow, intestine, kidney, 
adrenals and thyroid. The leucocytes take but little part 
in phagocytosis in the organs, although phagocytosis goes on 
actively in a slide of blood. 
During the last week I have examined the blood of a woman 
suffering from an infection with the sestivo-autumnal type of 
organism, in which a great number of crescents were to be 
seen. These in a freshly made slide of blood, with very few 
exceptions, retained their crescentic shape for only a few 
minutes. They soon drew themselves up, thus straightening 
out the curve of the crescent while shortening themselves into 
the well-known ovoid form. After the lapse of 10 to 13 minutes 
most of them were quite round and extra-corpuscular, the 
“ bib” lying beside them as a delicate circle or “shadow ” of 
the red corpuscle. 
After 30 to 35 minutes certain ones of these spherical forms 
became flagellated ; others, and especially those in which the 
pigment formed a definite ring and was not diffused throughout 
the organism, remained quiet and did not become flagellated. 
In a field where an example of each form could be watched, the flagella broke from the flagellated form and struggled 
about among the corpuscles, finally approaching the quiet 
spherical form; one of them entered, agitating the pigment 
greatly, sometimes spinning the ring about. The rest were 
refused admission, but swarmed about, beating their heads 
against the wall of the organism. This occurred after 35 to 
45 minutes. 
After the entrance of the flagellum the organism again 
became quiet and rather swollen, but although in the two 
instances in which this process was traced the fertilized form 
was watched for a long time, no form analogous to the “ ver- 
miculus ” was seen. 
This is evidently for the human being what was fore- 
shadowed by the organisms of the bird. 
(In part an abstract of a paper read before the British Asso- 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, August 34, 1897, and 
shortly to appear, in extenso, in the Journal of Experimental 
Medicine.)