He states that there exists in the
blood of those suffering from recurrent fever a haematozoon, which is
most prominent after the fever has begun to fall, when it is of
enormous proportions, twenty or more diameters of a red blood
corpuscle, although smaller ones may still be found. The parasite
consists of a delicate amoeboid body containing a multitude of dark,
round, uniform, sharply outlined, movable granules. Besides these, the
protoplasm contains a generally grayish homogeneous nucleus as large
as one or two red blood corpuscles. The protoplasm sends out
pseudopodia (with granules), which sometimes separate and appear as
small delicate pieces of protoplasm. They vary in size, and are often
swallowed by the red blood corpuscles in which they grow, and finally
develop into the above mentioned amoeboid bodies.
Prof. J. Lewis Smith has made a great many autopsies of children dead
from cholera infantum, and almost invariably found the stomach and
liver in a comparatively healthy condition. Ganghen, who has given
this subject considerable study, denies the existence of any specific
germ in the summer diarrhea of infants, but claims to have found three
different germs in the intestines of children suffering from cholera
infantum, each producing a chemical poison which is capable of
producing vomiting, purging, and even death.
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