Tribe 1.—Endoschiza.[170]—With schizogony occurring in the intracellular phase, e.g., Selenidium (from Annelida and Gephyrea), Merogregarina (from an Ascidian).
Tribe 2.—Ectoschiza.—In which the schizont is free, and schizogony is extracellular, e.g., Ophryocystis (from Blaps, a beetle), and Schizocystis (from Ceratopogon larva).
Order. Coccidiidea.
Hake (1839) first saw the organisms now termed Coccidia during his investigations on the so-called coccidial nodules of rabbits. The opinions as to the nature of these peculiar formations were very diverse. The discoverer considered them to be a sort of pus corpuscle; Nasse (1843) took them for epithelial cells of the biliary passages, others for helminthes, especially the ova of trematodes (Dujardin, Küchenmeister, Gubler, etc). Remak (1845) was the first to draw attention to their relation to the Psorospermia (Myxosporidia), and this investigator found them also in the small intestine and vermiform appendix of rabbits. Lieberkühn (1854), who examined not only the coccidia of rabbits, but found similar forms in the kidneys of frogs, likewise called them definitely psorosperms. To differentiate Müller’s psorosperms, which are found in fishes, from those of rabbits, etc., the latter were called egg-shaped psorosperms (Eimer), until R. Leuckart (1879) named them Coccidia and placed them in a group of the Sporozoa analogous to that of the Gregarinida, Myxosporidia, etc. Numerous works confirmed the occurrence of coccidia, not only in all classes of vertebrate animals, but also in invertebrates (Mollusca, Myriapoda, Annelida, etc.). A large number of genera and species have in the course of time been described which inhabit the epithelium of the intestine and its appendages for choice, but are also found in other organs (kidneys, spleen, ovaries, vas deferens, testicles). Some also live in the connective tissue of various organs, more particularly of the intestine.
The knowledge of the development of the coccidia was of particular importance in determining their classification. By means of encysted coccidia from the liver of rabbits, Kauffmann (1847) first confirmed the fact that the cyst, which was partly or entirely filled with granular contents, divided into three or four pale bodies (fig. [71]) after a long sojourn in water. Lieberkühn observed the same process in the host in the case of the coccidia of the kidney of the frog. Stieda (1865) studied more minutely the changes that occur within the encysted coccidia of the liver of rabbits after the death of the host. He discovered that the bodies now known as “spores” were oval formations pointed at one pole, and surrounded by a delicate membrane, which exhibited a certain thickness at the pointed extremity and enclosed a slightly bent rodlet, expanding at either end into a strongly light-refracting globule; a finely granular globule was present in the middle of the spore. Waldenburg (1862) saw the same phenomenon in coccidia from the epithelium of the villi and Lieberkühn’s glands of the intestine of the rabbit; but the process in this case took place in a much shorter time.
According to the discovery of Kloss (1855), the spores of the coccidia of the urinary organ of the garden snail were formed in far greater numbers: the round spores also harboured several (five to six) rodlets, which after the bursting of the spore-envelope became free. Eimer’s researches (1870) afforded information regarding a Coccidium from the intestine of the mouse, which was transformed in toto into a “spore,” containing small sickle-shaped bodies. The fact was, moreover, established that the little bodies left the delicate envelope when in the intestine, made movements of flexion and extension, and were finally transformed into amœboid organisms, which apparently penetrated the epithelial cells; at all events, similar bodies of various sizes were seen in these cells. Taking the immense number of these parasites into account and the lack of any other cause, Eimer attributed the sudden death of his mice to the Gregarina falciformis, as the parasite was then called, just in the same way as a few years previously Reincke ascribed the acute and fatal intestinal catarrh of rabbits to the invasion of intestinal coccidia.
All that had become known about coccidia up to 1879 was then compiled by Leuckart, and completed by his own observations on the coccidia of the liver of the rabbit. Experimental infections had already been conducted by Waldenburg (1862) with intestinal coccidia of rabbits, and by Rivolta (1869–73) with the coccidia of fowls, which experiments confirmed the importance of the spores, or bodies enclosed in them, in the transmission of the parasites to other animals. Accordingly, it was assumed that after the entry of the spores into the intestine the sporozoites were set free, actively penetrated into the intestinal cells, where they grew into coccidia, and finally became encysted. The further development, i.e., the formation of spores, took place outside the host’s body in these cases; in other cases (Kloss, Eimer) it took place within the host. Although much regarding the cycle of development was still hypothetical, the ideas coincided with the observations, and were therefore universally regarded as established. Further research confirmed this view in numerous new forms.
L. Pfeiffer’s statements (1891) on the part that certain coccidia or their sporozoites played, or seemed to play, as causes of disease gave a renewed impetus to the investigation of the coccidia. The ingestion of even very numerous spores did not appear to account for the mass infection so frequently observed, even after Balbiani had confirmed the fact that there were two, and not one, sporozoites contained in every spore of the coccidia of rabbits (fig. [72]). The hypothesis was therefore advanced that the sporozoites or young coccidia were able to divide once again by sporulating. The question was finally solved quite differently. R. Pfeiffer (1892) first confirmed the fact that in addition to the well-known method of sporulation in the coccidia of the rabbit that causes the infection of fresh hosts (“exogenous sporulation”), an enormous increase may follow in the already infected host in a manner that Eimer first observed in the coccidia of the intestine of the mouse (“endogenous sporulation”). It had hitherto been believed that some of the species of coccidia increased like the rabbit parasite, then known as Coccidium oviforme, and others like Eimeria falciformis, and this difference had been made the foundation of a classification. R. Pfeiffer was successful in observing the occurrence of both kinds of development in the same species, and expressed the opinion that endogenous sporulation (fig. [73]), which takes place within the host, was the cause of the mass-infection that is mostly accompanied by serious consequences (fig. [74]). L. Pfeiffer sought, especially, to demonstrate the correctness of this view as regards other species of coccidia and for this purpose he utilized the experiences already published. Coccidia were known to exist in a number of different hosts, and to propagate in some according to the Coccidium type, in others according to the Eimeria type. It therefore was reasoned that in this case it was not a question of two species belonging to different genera living side by side, with a different mode of development, but of one species, in the life of which both forms of development occurred alternately.
This interpretation of facts was combated especially by A. Schneider (1892) and by Labbé, but has, nevertheless, proved true, apart from the circumstance that Schuberg succeeded in discovering the hitherto unknown Coccidium form in the intestine of the mouse; and that, moreover, Léger confirmed the fact that there are no Arthropoda in which Eimeria are not found together with coccidia. The question was finally settled by experiments made by Léger with the coccidia of Scolopendra cingulata, by Schaudinn and Siedlecki with those of Lithobius forficatus, and by Simond with the coccidia of the rabbit. On Simond’s suggestion the sickle-shaped germs corresponding to the sporozoites, which are formed by endogenous sporulation, are generally termed merozoites; and in accordance with Schaudinn’s suggestion, those individuals which form merozoites are termed schizonts, and those which produce spores are called sporonts. In contradistinction to sporogony (exogenous sporulation), the term schizogony (endogenous sporulation) is used.
The more minute examination of these processes at last led to the discovery of sexual dimorphism, of copulation and of alternation of generations in the coccidia. Schuberg was the first to consider the possibility of copulation in coccidia; in addition to the formations which now are termed merozoites, he observed very diminutive bodies (“microsporozoites”) in the coccidia of the intestine of the mouse, which were able eventually to copulate. Labbé confirmed this observation in some of the species, and Simond expressed the opinion that bodies termed “chromatozoites” occurred in all coccidia. Copulation itself was then observed by Schaudinn and Siedlecki (1897). The copulating bodies were termed gametes. As, however, they differed considerably one from the other, the males were called microgametes (i.e., the microsporozoites of Labbé and the chromatozoites of Simond) and the females macrogametes. After copulation was completed sporogony took place, and in the cycle of development of one species this regularly alternated with schizogony (asexual multiplication). Schaudinn in 1900 described in detail the life-cycle of Eimeria (Coccidium) schubergi.