18
Piroplasmosis of the Demestic Fowl
and rare intracorpuscular bodies, resemb-
ling those described by Balfour (loc. cit.)
from Sudan; no anaemic changes were,
however, noticed. A diagnosis of spiro-
chaetosis was made and an injection of
soamin (1.5 grain in 1.0 ml. of distilled
water) was given in the pectoral muscles.
The fowl house, in which this bird
had been kept, was found to be heavily
infested with A. persicus, in all stages of
development. About 200 adult specimens
of the tick were collected for transmis-
sion experiments, and the rest were des-
troyed in their natural habitat by means
of a braziers' lamp. Two days after
the injection, the hen was seen again
and found to be bright and apparently
normal; and its temperature had come
down to 106.0ºF. Microscopic examination
of blood smears revealed no spirochaetes,
but 'Balfour's bodies' were present as on
the first day. A second intra-muscular
injection of soamin (one grain in 1.0 ml.
of distilled water) was given, and blood
examined after the lapse of another day;
'Balfour's bodies' were still present as
on the first day. On clinical grounds the
bird was considered to have been cured.
Blood smears from some other adult
birds of the same flock were examined and
found to contain similar intra-corpuscular
bodies in small numbers and un-accompa-
nied by clinical symptons. Subsequent
examination of the indigenous fowls at
Hissar, Kasur and Lahore resulted in
similar findings.
On closer examination the intra-corpus-
cular bodies were found to be of two kinds;
(i) medium-sized to large round bodies and
rings (1.2 to 4.0µ), which were present in
small numbers—one in about ten fields,
and which appeared to divide by breaking
up into small granules (schizogony) in
the erythrocytes; and (ii) small ring forms
(0.7 to 1.5µ) which were somewhat more
frequent than those of the first kind and
which appeared to divide by budding or
binary fission, one, two or four being in
each erythrocyte. The larger bodies of
the first type are morphologically indistin-
guishable from A. pullorum, and the
smaller bodies of the second type bear
close resemblance to the haematozoo
described by Coles [1937] from the Ame
rican and African fowls, from which, how
ever, they differ in that more than two
may be present in a single erythrocyto
while their mode of division clearly difffe
rentiates them from smaller rings of
pullorum. The specific identity of th
parasite is being studied separately an
in the rest of this paper it will be referre
to as 'Coles' haematozoon.'
TRANSMISSION
The transmission experiment describe
below was carried out mainly to recover
strain of A. pullorum from ticks presume
to be infected with this parasite. For
this purpose, a search was made at Hissa
for clean fowls, but, at first, this sear
appeared to be quite futile because Arg
was very common in the fowl house
Later, however, a tick-free fowl house wa
found in which a large number of six
eight week old White Leghorn chicke
were kept. Their blood was free from
pullorum but a few 'Coles' haematozoa
were present in nearly all of them.
the absence of absolutely clean birds, two
six-week old chickens of this lot we
employed for the transmission experimen
Two hundred adult fowl ticks (A. pe
sicus), collected from an infected fo
house, were divided into three nearly equ
groups and each group was kept overnig
in a large glass jar with the two chicken
during three successive nights (2-5 Jun
1940). A perforated cardboard disc place
at the bottom of the jar provided a pla
form for the chickens to stand upon an
at the same time enabled the ticks to his
under it; the mouth of the jar was coverd
with a piece of muslin. On each succee
ing morning numerous small blood clo
were noticed on the legs of the chicken
indicating that the ticks had fed on then
Three days after the first batch of tic
had fed, one of the chickens (Chick
No. 2) received, intra-muscularly, 0.75 c
of blood direct from a hen showing fr