Researches on the Intestinal Protozoa of Monkeys and Man

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Abstract
(A) Enteromonas hominis Fonseca, 1915 (emend. Dobell, 1921) is the correct designation of the flagellate first adequately described as Tricercomonas intestinalis by Wenyon and O'Connor in 1917.Organisms morphologically indistinguishable, at all stages in the life-cycle, inhabit various macaques (M. rhesus, M. sinicus, M. nemestrinus). I have grown the simian species in “pure” cultures, and have obtained all stages in vitro and in vivo: and I have also obtained evidence—not “experimental ”, but from observed spontaneous spread of infection—that the species in M. rhesus and M. sinicus, at least, are identical.An attempt to infect a man experimentally, by oral administration of cysts from a pure culture of the simian species (from M. sinicus), was unsuccessful.(B) Embadomonas intestinalis [ = Retortamonas Wenrich nec Grassi] is probably the correct designation of the flagellate described by Wenyon and O'Connor (1917) as Waskia: and it is the only intestinal protozoon of Man which can be readily cultivated at all temperatures from 15° to 38° C. This species closely resembles several others described from other vertebrates—both warm-blooded and cold-blooded—but the identity of them all is still questionable.A species similar to E. intestinalis has been observed in macaques by several workers, and has been assumed to be identical on insufficient evidence. Two attempts which I have made to infect macaques (M. rhesus and M. sinicus) experimentally, by feeding on cysts in pure cultures of E. intestinalis from Man, were completely negative.(C) Consequently, while it seems probable on general grounds that both the Enteromonas and the Embadommas of men and macaques are specifically identical, it is still premature—with only negative evidence for their transmissibility from host to host—to assert this conclusion as a fact.

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