Malacca Agricultural Medical Board AND

The first observations on the malaria parasites were made from fresh blood. "It is in the pure and fresh serum, " writes Laveran, "in the midst of the blood corpuscles that the parasites are best studied. " Later and with seeming reluctance Laveran turned to dried films usually coloured with methylene blue. A better stain, the first satisfactory stain for the parasites, was that of ROMANOWSKY (1891) who, combining eosin with old solutions of methylene blue, "ripened " with age, found a decisive red stain for the nuclear chromatin. For the first time the internal structure of the organisms could be differentiated in colour--the nuclei red and the cytoplasm blue. Modern methods of staining blood films for malaria diagnosis all stem from Romanowsky's discovery. Romanowsky's method di not receive general acclaim. SCHOFFNER (1899), among others, found the method unreliable, and it was with haematoxylin that he stained the films for his original demonstration f stippling in the vivax-infected cell. But it was with Roman-owsky's stain that his colleague MAURER (1900) confirmed these observations, and MAURER (1902) who was able two years later, having in the meantime improved his technique, to achieve a superb definition of the stippling in cells infected with Plasmodium faldparum