HISTOPLASMOSIS: A FATAL INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEMBLING KALA-AZAR FOUND AMONG NATIVES OF TROPICAL AMERICA.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. Histoplasmosis¹ is a term applied to a fatal infection by a protozoon, Histoplasma capsulatum, which has been encountered three times during the past two and one-half years in Ancon Hospital, Canal Zone, Panama. Clinically and pathologically the disease is suggestive of kala-azar,² a disease of India, characterized by irregular fever, emaciation and splenomegaly and by the presence of the Leishman-Donovan body in the tissues. The micro-organism responsible for the Isthmian infection is different from the Leishman-Donovan body, sufficiently so to warrant its being placed in a different order. The condition was not discovered until the autopsies, and chiefly on that account cultural experiments were unsuccessful and clinical data meager. HISTORICAL SKETCH. Cunningham³ published in 1885 an account of bodies found in the tissue obtained from a Delhi boil. Cunningham's technic was crude and the bodies measured 8.8 to 12.6 microns—altogether too large to be the bodies