30

Scientific Memoirs by

tendent à démontrer qu'il n'existe pas de rapport direct et constant entre les
formes sous lequelles les hématozoaires.se présentent dans le sang, et les mani-
festations cliniques du paludisme; ou peut dire seulement que certaines formes
parasitaires is observent plus souvent chez certains malades; les corpes en
croissant, par exemple, dans les formes de rechute et chez les cachectiques,
ainsi que je l'ai etabli depuis longtemps." Indian medical literature has, as far
as I know, produced no report of accurate investigations on this point. Dr.
Vandyke Carter, in his interesting and valuable article on the malarial parasite
(scientific Memoirs, 1887 ) agrees with Laveran as to the probability of the vari-
ous forms belonging to one species; but it is noteworthy that, in the only pure
quartan case in his series he found no crescentic forms, while in all the others,
which were quotidian or irregular in type, he observed these forms. The
drawings (which accompany the article) of the parasites seen in the quartan
case, correspond also in their characters with the form of parasite described
by Golgi, etc., as characteristic of quartan fever. Since the date of this article
many observers have published short records of their work in various medical
papers, but, as far as the writer knows, no attempt has been made to confirm
or refute the results arrived at in Europe, as to the various species and the
relation they bear to the chief types of the disease.

     During the past two years the writer has had opportunities of observing
many cases of malarial fevers, and, in all of a definite and well marked type, has
been able to distinguish the marked peculiarities and characteristic life history
which have been noticed in similar cases in Europe. Though an account of
these observations may add nothing to our knowledge of the biology of the
parasite and its relation to disease, it may perhaps possess some value as a
confirmation of work already done elsewhere, and as a further proof of the
constant characters which the parasite presents in all countries in which it has
been observed.

     The investigations of observers in all parts of the world during the past
15 years, render it now unnecessary to enter into an argument as to whether the
bodies present in the blood in malarial fevers are of a parasitic nature or not.
The almost universal position of opinion on this point is very well expressed by a
recent remark of Dr. Patrick Manson that " if Laveran's body is not a para-
site, then it is a most wonderfully contrived device in Nature for deceiving the
pathologist." I have therefore thought it better in this short note, not to give
a full list of the cases examined by me with notes on each; but to take two or
three typical examples of each group in which there could be no doubt as
to the clinical type of the fever, and to record, in a systematic form, the results
of the examination of the blood, giving at the same time reproductions of
drawings made from these selected cases, outlined by the camera lucida
and coloured from nature. These I have endeavoured to make absolutely