Abstract
FOR the past five years Prof. E. A. Minchin and Dr. J. D. Thomson have been engaged upon the investigation of the rat trypanosome, Trypanosoma lewisi, with special reference to its relation to the rat flea, Ceratophyllus fasciatus. The results of this laborious and painstaking research are now published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. They form a comprehensive monograph which occupies the whole of the last part of this journal (vol. lx., part 4) and will undoubtedly be a standard work of reference for students of these very important blood-parasites. The fact that the authors have dissected and examined more than 1600 fleas in the course of their investigations shows the thoroughness with which the work has been carried out, while the artistic treatment and accuracy of detail contributed by the illustrations, for which due acknowledgment is made to Miss Rhodes, leave nothing to be desired. T. lewisi is fortunately a non-pathogenic parasite, at any rate so far as the rat is concerned, and it cannot live at all in human blood. It therefore forms a much more suitable type for general study than such deadly species as those which are conveyed by the tsetse-fly in Africa, and are responsible for fly-disease amongst horses and cattle, and for sleeping sickness in human beings. The authors give a very useful account of the technique employed in their investigations, and, incidentally, throw a good deal of light upon details of the anatomy and histology of the flea.
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Blood-Parasites and Fleas . Nature 95, 189 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095189a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095189a0