50
REPORT OF THE IMPERIAL BACTERIOLOGICAL LABORATORY,
experimental work. The three 1923-24 animals were not affected with
rinderpest; one was taken in for use in a blackquarter experiment, one
had been discontinued for some time from a rinderpest test, and one
was a calf containing a large admixture of European blood that died in
an outkraal. The lesions found post-mortem attributable to the peculiar
piroplasm infection in the animals were, invariably, very striking enlarge-
ment of the spleen and usually of the lymphatic glands and infarcts of
kidney, which, however, were few and ill-defined except in one case,
and hence the gross pathological picture differed somewhat from that
observable, in the African disease. Transmission experiments, by direct
inoculation of infected spleen pulp or by tick feeding, failed. Having
in mind the pathological phenomena observable in the affection, the
failure to transmit the disease experimentally, and the close resemblance-
of the piroplasms found within the red blood cells to those seen in the
Theileria mutans infection, except that they were usually much richer
and there was a tendency for the preponderance of one morphological
type, it occurred to me that the infective agent of the condition that
bore the resemblance to East Coast fever was not unlikely merely a high-
ly exalted or virulent variant of the common Theileria mutans, which.
perhaps had gained special pathogenic properties in the body of a highly
susceptible host. The work of Brumpt in Paris with an Algerian strain
of Theileria mutans passaged through French cattle, that are normally
free from infection with this parasite, afterwards came to my notice,
and from his investigations it would appear that the mutans parasite
can be exalted so as to produce an affection like East Coast fever, with,
the presence of plasmatic bodies in the lymphatic tissue.
The preparations containing the " blue bodies " found in animals at
Muktesar were shown to Sir Arnold Theiler during his visit to Muktesar
in February 1924, and he declared that they were undoubtedly what he
called Theileria bodies. The fact that in East and South Africa, East
Coast fever breaks out with all the epizootiological characteristics of a
disease caused by a parasite of highly fixed pathogenicity makes it diffi-
cult, however, to admit without considerable demur that the parva
type of parasite is specifically identical with the mutans type. How-
ever, for further reasons that will be published later in an extended
technical paper we believe that there is no need to create a generic term
other than Theileria to designate the mutans parasite.
Some observations and experimental work were performed in the
laboratory upon suspected Anaplasma bodies in the blood of cattle ;
in the routine smears, 16 specimens in 1922-23, and 10 in 1923-24 were
found to contain bodies identical in appearance with the structures held
to be parasitic in nature that go by this name. However, we are not
in a position to make any pronouncement on this subject at present.
Two cases only of infection with Plasmodium bubalis were discovered
in this period in buffaloes.
(m) Minor researches. Among interesting studies conducted at the-
laboratory on a lesser scale may be mentioned an enquiry by Mr. Bennett