Note on developmental forms of trypanosoma brucei (pecaudi) in the internal organs, axillary glands and bone-marrow of the gerbil (gerbillus pygargus)

Abstract

The transmission and maintenance of the trypanosome strains being under my care, ample opportunities were afforded of noting the progress of the disease induced by them in experimental animals and the structural changes in te trypanosomes themselves at varying periods. But it was mainly the cultural work associated with this trypanosome that led to futher investigation of these developmental forms and thereby established the observations forming the subject of the note. On beginning the culture work, inability to recognise if certain forms met with in cultures were either developmental or degenerative phases, suggested a study of the changes which the parasite undergoes, bot in the body of the gerbil after death and in citrated blood, and the comparison of these changes with the forms found in Novy and MacNeal and Nicolle’s media. With this in view, a gerbil was inoculated with infected blood and chloroformed on the fifth day after injection. Cultures from the heart’s blood and smears from the various organs were made, all being examined at regular intervals for comparison. Light was thereby thrown on the point in question, but, in addition to this, attention was drawn to what undoubtedly looked like trypanosome forms in the red blood corpuscles in the spleen. Some of these were identical with those figured by Chagas in his paper on Schizotrypanum cruzi , which appeared at the time this work was being conducted.