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Some multiply by fission, others by sporulation. Some forms are motile, others are non-motile. Tuberculosis, tetanus, anthrax, and many other surgical diseases are due to different forms of bacilli. Spirilla are long, slender, thread-like cells, more or less spiral or wavy. Some move by a screw-like contraction of the protoplasm, some by flagellæ.
Finally it breaks up into many minute bodies called spores. These bodies break out of the corpuscle and for a time live a free life in the blood. After a time they make their way into other red blood-corpuscles, develop into new malarial amoeboid parasites, and repeat the growth and sporulation. This process can apparently be repeated many times without check.
There is one variety, the most common one, which requires two days for its growth, thus giving rise to the paroxysm of the disease about once in forty- eight hours; another variety appears to require three days for its growth; while still another variety appears to be decidedly irregular in its period of growth and sporulation. These facts readily explain some of the variations in the disease.
After they have again found their way into a blood-corpuscle the fever diminishes, and during their growth in the corpuscle until the next sporulation the individual has a rest from the more severe symptoms. There appears to be more than one variety of the malarial organism, the different types differing in the length of time it takes for their growth and sporulation.
The mystery of the remedial effect of quinine was also solved, as it was found that, if administered at the time which centuries of experience has shown us to be the most effective, between or shortly before the paroxysms, it either prevented sporulation or killed the spores. So that at one triumphant stroke the mystery of centuries was cleared up.
Certain other irregularities appear to be due to a different cause. More than one brood of parasites may be in the blood of the individual at the same time, one producing sporulation at one time and another at a different time. Such a simultaneous growth of two independent broods may plainly produce almost any kind of modification in the regularity of the disease.
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