Abstract
Donovan 1 who found Leishmania donovani first in the living patient also discovered the parasite in smears from the peripheral blood. Many have advocated the examination stained blood smears for diagnosis of the disease (Patton, 2 Marshall, 3 Cannata, 4 Knowles 5 ) but all agree that the organism is present in small numbers and that many slides must be carefully studied. Spleen smears obtained by aspiration has been the usual method for diagnosis. As the bleeding time is prolonged in all advanced cases this procedure is not devoid of danger (Donovan, 1 Wylie, 6 Knowles, 7 Rogers, 8 Bramachari 9 ). Blood culture has been suggested as a substitute but results have been inconstant (Mayer and Werner, 10 Wenyon, 11 Row, 12 Korke, 13 Knowles 5 ). The last named author made 128 cultures from 34 patients with two positive cultures from one patient. At first Rogers merely citrated the patient's blood but Nicolle was much more successful with his “N.N.N.” medium, a rabbit blood agar. The experiments of Rogers 15 and of Cornwall and LaFrenais 14 showed that culture media made with human blood were not favorable to the growth of Leishmania donovani.
Two series of experiments were made using salt agar as in N.N.N. medium but with washed red cells and serum, both unheated and heated at 56 C° for one-half hour, from man, horse, sheep and rabbit. Human red cells were somewhat inhibitory; human serum much more so. Rabbit cells and serum were less unfavorable to growth but were inferior to whole defibinated rabbit blood. In action the cells and serum of the horse and sheep lay between those of man and the rabbit. As a result of these experiments, a technic for blood culture was devised as follows: 10 c.c. of blood was drawn from a vein into 2 c.c. of 1 per cent. citrated Locke's solution in a syringe and immediately expelled into 50-70 c.c. of the same fluid in a flask.
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