Infectious Blood Diseases of Man and Animals

Basic information is given with evaluation of views on further research. Illustrations include original drawings, photographs, sequence studies, and electron photomicrographs. Characteristics are examined of the protistan agents, and principles governing maintenance, perpetuation, and diseasecausing abilities. Some 19 contributors "assist in over-coming the amputation of microbiology into the various heads, arms, and legs which today characterize it" and suggest productive lines of research. Special topics include: ecology and host-parasite relationship; abrogation immunological tolerance as a model for autoimmunity; response and pathogenesis; antigens and antibodies; Zoonotic potential of blood parasites. Under blood protists are found concepts, cultivation and nutritional requirements, leads to chemotherapy, protozoa invading and not invading, development and reproduction (vertebrate and anthropod host), preservation and storage in vitro, mechanisms of inheritance in blood protozoa, locomotion of blood protists. Volume II deals with diseases of particular interest to man and of laboratory animals, among other subjects. According to the definition by John 0. Corliss, blood protists "may be said to include all microorganisms known to date to pass a major portion of their life in the erythrocytes, or plasma of the blood of vertebrate animals. The hosts, here limited primarily to man and other mammals, may be the sole host or one of several in the full life history of the parasite." Appropriate chapters give details concerning host-parasite interrelationships, besides guides to generic names in a subject index. References and bibliography are extensive, fortunately.