The Affinities of Schizotrypanum

Abstract

IN a recent number of the Archiv für Protistenkunde (vol. xx., p. 361), Dr. M. Hartmann makes an important addition to our knowledge of Schizotrypanum cruzi, the trypanosome of human beings discovered by Chagas in Brazil (see NATURE, August 4, 1910). Chagas described a process of multiple fission (“schizogony”), taking place in the lung capillaries, of forms not enclosed in cells (NATURE, I.e., p. 143, Fig. 2, b-e). In addition to this type of multiplication, Hartmann finds another process of schizogony within hypertrophied endothelial cells of the lung, as a result of which the cell contains some twenty or more small, pear-shaped organisms, each with a distinct kineto-nucleus and trophonucleus, but no flagellum. The chief interest of this discovery lies in the very great resemblance of these intracellular forms of Schizotrypanum to those of Leishmania donovani, the parasite of Kala Azar; in fact, anyone, looking at the figure given by Hartmann, might suppose that it represented a preparation of Leishmania. Similar forms are stated to have been found in the heart-musculature and brain of human beings that have died from “Schizotrypanosomiasis ”(sic), sit venia verbo!