The Reticulo-Endothelial System in Malarial Hæmoglobinuria of Monkeys

It is generally accepted that of the manyways of studying the problems relating to the reticuloendothelial system splenectomy is one of the most valuable and popular methods. The spleen being one of the organs rich in reticuloendothelial cells, the removal of the organ is assumed to result both in the lowering of the total number of reticuloendothelial cells and in the diminution of the functional capacity of the remaining cells. On the basis of this assumption extirpation of the organ has been widely practised in connection with studies relating to the function of this system. The results obtained, however, have not come up to expectation in all cases. Without going into the reasons for the variable nature of the results obtained in different diseases (Krishnan, 1932) it is enough to state that, so far as the role of the system in monkey malaria is concerned, splenectomy experiments have yielded valuable and conclusive results. The senior writer showed (Krishnan, Smith and Lai, 1933) that removal of the spleen in all species of monkeys made the animals more susceptible to Plasmodium knowlesi and that it invariably resulted in an intensification of the infection followed by hsemoglobinuria and death in the majority of instances. This work has since been corroborated by (Sinton and Mulligan, 1933, and Knowles and Das Gupta, 1934). During these splenectomy experiments the senior writer noticed, for the first time, that the irus and rcidiatus monkeys which had never previously been known to suffer from malarial hsemoglobinuria developed the condition quite frequently after the removal of the spleen. This in fact led to a thorough study of the part played by the spleen in malarial hsemoglobinuria. Furthermore, in a previous paper the senior writer (Krishnan, 1935) from a study of the reticuloendothelial cell alterations in malarial hsemoglobinuria had suggested that the number and functional capacity of these cells were important factors in the setiology of the disease. It was therefore thought that splenectomy experiments would help to confirm