Abstract
Hitherto the cultivation of Leishmania donovani has been on various artificially prepared media usually with rabbit's blood as one of the ingredients. It is of some interest to record the flagellation of this parasite in blood from normal and kala-azar hamsters.
A minute piece of spleen from a hamster heavily infected with kala-azar was ground up in a mortar with 1.2 cc. of heart blood from the same animal. From this 4 hanging drop preparations were made with aseptic technique and sealed airtight with sterile vaseline. Two of these preparations were kept at a temperature between 20° C. and 22° C. These showed a large number of Leishmania flagellates when examined on the 6th day. The remaining 2 preparations kept at 37°C. showed no flagellates on repeated examination at different intervals up to the end of 3 weeks. Similar experiments repeated with normal hamster's blood yielded the same results, namely, the development of flagellates in such hanging drop preparations when kept at room temperature (20°C.–22°C.) but none in the preparations kept at 37° C.
The range of temperature in which flagellation may occur may be quite large, for Christophers, Shortt, and Barraud 1 obtained positive cultures of Leishmania donovani in temperatures between 16° C. and 34° C. The fact that Leishmania donovani from the spleen of a kala-azar hamster develop into flagellates in the blood from the same animal at room temperature points to the possibility that the parasite may even flagellate in the mammalian host under favorable conditions.
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