Amoebic or tropical dysentery : its complications and treatment.

  • Brown, William Carnegie, 1859-1916.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Amoebic or tropical dysentery : its complications and treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    CHAPTER II. History and Literature of Amcebic Dysentery. Although various protozoan organisms had previously been described as occasional habitants of the human alimentary tract, the history of amcebic dysentery definitely begins with the dis- covery by Lambl of a rhizopod in intestinal mucus, taken from a Jewish child, who died of infantile diarrhoea at the Kinder Spitale in Prague, in 1859. This organism he regarded as a monad— the term then generally used for unicellular protozoa—and his description states that it measured 009 mm. by *oi6 mm. At rest, it was roughly spherical in shape, but when in motion the body became elongated, and the animal progressed by throwing out club-shaped pseudopodia, which were homogeneous with the body substance. Lambl further noted the characteristic mole- cular vibration of granules in the protoplasm, which, he stated, was most active near the roots of the pseudopodia. Vacuoles were also seen in the body substance, and, in some specimens, delicate nuclear vesicles were visible. The movements, both protoplasmic and granular, were active at first, but within a few hours after the collection of the intestinal mucus they gradually ceased. These organisms were subsequently demonstrated by the same observer in many other cases of dysenteric diarrhoea. Lambl does not appear to have received the credit which he deserved for these important observations. It is generally stated that he attached no pathological significance to the presence of