7. Grass blade dew, not anything of account. One pale Gemiasma, three
blue Gemiasmas, Cosmarium, Closterium. Diatoms, pollen, found in
greenish earth and wet with the dew. Remarks: Observations made at the
pool with clinical microscope, one-quarter inch objective. Day cloudy,
foggy, hot.
8. Green earth in water way from pump near cemetery. Anabaina plentiful.
Diatoms, Oscillatoriaceæ. Polycoccus species. Pollen, Cosmarium,
Leptothrix, Gemiasma, old sporangia, spores many. Fungi belonging to
fruit. Puccinia. Anguillula fluviatilis.
9. Mr. Smith's blood. Spores, enlarged white corpuscles. Two sporangia?
Gemiasma dark brown, black. Mr. Smith is superintendent Congressional
Cemetery. Lived here for seven years. Been a great sufferer with ague.
Says the doctors told him that they could do no more for him than he
could for himself. So he used Ayer's ague cure with good effect for six
months. Then he found the best effect from the use of the Holman liver
ague pad in his own case and that of his children. From his account one
would infer that, notwithstanding the excellence of the ague pad, when
he is attacked, he uses blue mass, followed with purgatives, then 20
grains of quinine. Also has used arsenic, but it did not agree with him.
Also used Capsicum with good results. Had enlarged spleen; not so now.
2d specimen of Mr. Smith's blood. Stelline, no Gemiasma. 3d specimen,
do. One Gemiasma. 4th specimen. None. 5th specimen. Skin scraped showed
no plants. 6th specimen. Urine; amyloid bodies; spores; no sporangia.
United States Magazine store grounds. Observation 1. Margin of
Eastern Branch River. Substance from decaying part of a water plant.
Oscillatoriaceæ. Diatoms. Anguillula. Chytridium. Dirt. No Gemiasma.
Observation 2. Moist soil. Near by, amid much rubbish, one or two
so-called Gemiasmas; white, clear, peripheral margin.
Observation 3. Green deposit on decaying wood. Oscillatoriaceæ.
Protuberans lamella, Gemiasma alba. Much foreign matter.
Mr. Russell, Mrs. R., Miss R., residents of Magazine Grounds presented
no ague plants in their blood. Sergeant McGrath, Mrs. M., Miss M.,
presented three or four sporangias in their blood. Dr. Hodgkins, some in
urine. Dr. H.'s friend with chills, not positive as to ague. No plants
found.
Observations in East Greenwich, R.I., Aug. 16, 1877.
1. At early morn I examined greenish earth, northwest of the town along
the margin of a beautiful brook. Found the Protuberans lamella, the
Gemiasma alba and rubra. Observation 2. Found the same. Observation 3.
Found the same.
Observation 4. Salt marsh below the railroad bridge over the river.
The scrapings of the soil showed beautiful yellow and transparent
Protuberans, beautiful green sporangias of the Gemiasma verdans.
Observation 5. Near the brook named was a good specimen of the Gemiasma
plumba. While I could not find out from the lay people I asked that any
ague was there, I now understand it is all through that locality.
Observation at Wellesley, Mass., Aug. 20, 1877.
No incrustation found. Examined the vegetation found on the margin of
the Ridge Hills Farm pond. Among other things I found an Anguillula
fluviatilis. Abundance of microspores, bacteria. Some of the Protococci.
Gelatinous masses, allied to the protuberans, of a light yellow color
scattered all over with well developed spores, larger than those found
in the Protuberans. One or two oval sporanges with double outlines. This
observation was repeated, but the specimens were not so rich. Another
specimen from the same locality was shown to be made up of mosses by the
venation of leaves.
Mine host with whom I lodged had a microscopical mount of the
Protococcus nivalis in excellent state of preservation. The sporangia
were very red and beautiful, but they showed no double cell wall.
In this locality ague is unknown; indeed, the place is one of unusual
salubrity. It is interesting to note here to show how some of the algæ
are diffused. I found here an artificial pond fed by a spring, and
subject to overflow from another pond in spring and winter. A stream of
living water as large as one's arm (adult) feeds this artificial pond,
still it was crowded with the Clathrocyotis æruginosa of some writers
and the Polycoccus of Reinsch. How it got there has not yet been
explained.
The migration of the ague eastward is a matter of great interest; it
is to be hoped that the localities may be searched carefully for your
plants, as I did in New Haven.
In this connection I desire to say something about the presence of the
Gemiasmas in the Croton water. The record I have given of finding
the Gemiasma verdans is not a solitary instance. I did not find the
gemiasmas in the Cochituate, nor generally in the drinking waters of
over thirty different municipalities or towns I have examined during
several years past. I have no difficulty in accounting for the presence
of the Gemiasmas in the Croton, as during the last summer I made studies
of the Gemiasma at Washington Heights, near 165th St. and 10th Ave.,
N.Y.
Plate VIII. is a photograph of a drawing of some of the Gemiasmas
projected by the sun on the wall and sketched by the artist on the wall,
putting the details in from microscopical specimens, viewed in the
ordinary way. This should make the subject of another observation.
I visited this locality several times during August and October, 1881. I
found an abundance of the saline incrustation of which you have spoken,
and at the time of my first visit there was a little pond hole just east
of the point named that was in the act of drying up. Finally it dried
completely up, and then the saline and green incrustations both were
abundant enough. The only species, however, I found of the ague plants
was the Gemiasma verdans. On two occasions of a visit with my pupils I
demonstrated the presence of the plants in the nasal excretions from my
nostrils. I had been sneezing somewhat.
There is one circumstance I would like to mention here: that was, that
when, for convenience' sake, my visits were made late in the day, I
did not find the plants abundant, still could always get enough to
demonstrate their presence; but when my visits were timed so as to come
in the early morning, when the dew was on, there was no difficulty
whatever in finding multitudes of beautiful and well developed plants.
To my mind this is a conclusive corroboration of your own statements in
which you speak of the plants bursting, and being dissipated by the
heat of the summer sun, and the disseminated spores accumulating in
aggregations so as to form the white incrustation in connection with
saline bodies which you have so often pointed out.
I also have repeated your experiments in relation to the collection
of the mud, turf, sods, etc., and have known them to be carried
many hundred miles off and identified. I have also found the little
depressions caused by the tread of cattle affording a fine nidus for the
plants. You have only to scrape the minutest point off with a needle or
tooth pick to find an abundance by examination. I have not been able to
explore many other sites, nor do I care, as I found all the materials I
sought in the vicinity of New York.
To this I must make one exception; I visited the Palisades last summer
and examined the localities about Tarrytown. This is an elevated
location, but I found no Gemiasmas. This is not equivalent to saying
there were none there. Indeed, I have only given you a mere outline of
my work in this direction, as I have made it a practice to examine the
soil wherever I went, but as most of my observations have been conducted
on non-malarious soils, and I did not find the plants, I have not
thought it worth while to record all my observations of a negative
character.
I now come to an important part of the corroborative observations, to
wit, the blood.
I have found it as you predicted a matter of considerable difficulty to
find the mature forms of the Gemiasmas in the blood, but the spore forms
of the vegetation I have no difficulty in finding. The spores have
appeared to me to be larger than the spores of other vegetations that
grow in the blood. They are not capable of complete identification
unless they are cultivated to the full form. They are the so-called
bacteria of the writers of the day. They can be compared with the spores
of the vegetation found outside of the body in the swamps and bogs.
You said that the plants are only found as a general rule in the blood
of old cases, or in the acute, well marked cases. The plants are so few,
you said, that it was difficult to encounter them sometimes. So also of
those who have had the ague badly and got well.
Observation at Naval Hospital, N.Y., Aug., 1877. Examined with great
care the blood of Donovan, who had had intermittent fever badly.
Negative result.
The same was the result of examining another case of typho-malarial
(convalescent); though in this man's blood there were found some
oval and sometimes round bodies like empty Gemiasmas, 1/1000 inch in
diameter. But they had no well marked double outline. There were no
forms found in the urine of this patient. In another case (Donovan,) who
six months previous had had Panama fever, and had well nigh recovered, I
found no spores or sporangia.
Observations made at Washington, D.C., Sept., 1879. At this time I
examined with clinical microscope the blood of eight to ten persons
living near the Congressional Cemetery and in the Arsenal grounds. I was
successful in finding the plants in the blood of five or more persons
who were or had been suffering from the intermittent fever.
In 1877, at the Naval Hospital, Chelsea, I accidentally came across
three well marked and well defined Gemiasmas in the blood of a marine
whom I was studying for another disease. I learned that he had had
intermittent fever not long before.
Another positive case came to my notice in connection with micrographic
work the past summer. The artist was a physician residing in one of the
suburban cities of New York. I had demonstrated to him Gemiasma verdans,
showed how to collect them from the soil in my boxes. And he had made
outline drawings also, for the purposes of more perfectly completing his
drawings. I gave him some of the Gemiasmas between a slide and cover,
and also some of the earth containing the soil. He carried them home. It
so happened that a brother physician came to his house while he was at
work upon the drawings. My artist showed his friend the plants I had
collected, then the plants he collected himself from the earth, and then
he called his daughter, a young lady, and took a drop of blood from
her finger. The first specimen contained several of the Gemiasmas. The
demonstration, coming after the previous demonstrations, carried a
conviction that it otherwise would not have had.