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Inside this snail's gut there is a protozoan that lives off the snail's ingested food. Yet this little organism is not a parasite, as you might think at first, but a symbiote. It takes food from the snail, but at the same time it secretes a chemical that aids the snail's digestion of the food. Do you get the picture? All these life forms exist in a complicated interdependence."
And often they exist in one kind of animal without doing any harm, and are only poisonous when introduced by insects into the blood of other kinds of animals! There is, further, another set of disease-causing protozoan parasites which are similar to the amoeba or proteus-animalcule, and a third, which belong to the group of "ciliated infusoria."
Grown turkeys and other fowls are not so susceptible to the disease. It is characterized by an inflammation of the liver and intestines, especially the caeca. The specific cause is a protozoan microorganism, Amoeba meleagridis. Adult fowls and turkeys may act as carriers of the germ, and the young turkeys become infected at an early period.
Horses, sheep, dogs, and other animals are also affected with diseases caused by the same group of Protozoan parasites. Not only do they transmit the disease germs that infect domestic animals but they are known to be responsible for at least two diseases of men, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and the relapsing fevers. Spotted Fever.
With all his wisdom, man has not evolved and placed here so much as a ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a clam. It is true that he has juggled with the wild horse and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced some hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse without going down before it; but as for species, he has not yet created and placed here even so much as a protozoan.
It is probably too small to be seen by any of our present microscopes, even the recently invented ultramicroscope. It is probably not a bacterial parasite but very likely a Protozoan, and certain specialists have even shown by the study of all the available data that it almost certainly belongs to the Sporozoan genus Spirocheta. Now what does all this mean?
The so-called virtues are the necessary means, the methods of existence by which we attain to truth; but the delight of the scientist in his work must vary in proportion as this truth is manifested in a physical force, a protozoan, or the soul of man. The one name seems scarcely suitable for the two forms.
It is not too much to say that the demonstration by Koch of the "bacillus tuberculosis" is, in its far-reaching results, one of the most momentous discoveries ever made. Of almost equal value have been the researches upon the protozoan forms of animal life, as causes of disease. As early as 1873, spirilla were demonstrated in relapsing fever.
These two later kinds of protozoan parasites I will at the moment leave out of consideration, as well as the "coccidia," which multiply in the tissue-cells of animals for instance, rabbits and mice and cause an unhealthy growth and excessive multiplication of the cells of the tissues, which in some respects resembles that seen in the terrible disease known as cancer.
The result of these widespread observations was the confirmation in every respect of Laveran's discovery of the association with malaria of a protozoan parasite. This was step number three. Clinical observation, empirical discovery of the cure, determination of the presence of a parasite. Two other steps followed rapidly.
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