Antidotes and Protistology

ANTIDOTES, see Poisoning. PROTISTOLOGY (Protistologie, Protistenkunde, Protistik, protistology), a branch of biology encompassing the study of protists (Protista), primary unicellular organisms, a group of living beings distinguished by Haeckel in 1866 from the plant and animal kingdoms of multicellular organisms. Haeckel included higher fungi among the protists, which are now classified within the realm of botany. Similarly, there is no basis for classifying multinucleate algae, such as Caulerpa, Vaucheria, and Botrydium, as protists simply because they are not divided into cells by complete septa. In his famous treatise on microbiology (1898–1901), Duclaux included protistology within microbiology, describing, for example, the division of an infusorian from the genus Colpidium and a flagellate protist alongside the division of bacteria. However, in most cases, the concept of protistology is considered broader than that of microbiology. When founding the famous Archiv für Protistenkunde in 1902, Schaudinn indicated that it should concentrate on works concerning the natural history of unicellular organisms. Dobell understands protistology in the broad sense of the word as the study of three groups of organisms: Protozoa (see), which possess an animal type of nutrition; Protophyta, characterized by an autotrophic plant type of nutrition; and the protists proper, which occupy an intermediate position regarding their type of nutrition. Reichenow, citing the fact that many protists possess a dual type of nutrition and pointing to the closest connection between unicellular flagellates containing chlorophyll and those lacking it, considers the division of unicellular organisms into Protozoa and Protophyta untenable and replaces the term protistology with protozoology. Following Doflein, he includes in his manual on protozoology those protists with clearly expressed plant-like types of nutrition and organization. Protistology in the modern sense of this term encompasses all of microbiology [including bacteriology, mycology (in the part concerning lower unicellular forms), the study of spirochetes, the Bartonella-Grahamia group, rickettsiae, submicroscopic organisms, Aphanozoa (Kruse), and Chlamydozoa (Prowazek) = Strongyloplasmata (Lipschutz)], phycology (in the part concerning unicellular algae), and protozoology in the narrow sense.

Along the lines of microbiology, protistology is adjacent to medical, veterinary, and agronomic sciences, agricultural sciences, fermentation technology, and other related disciplines. The enormous relative importance of protists in plankton (see), benthos (see), and edaphon (the world of lower organisms living in the soil) and their corresponding participation in biological processes occurring in the earth's crust bring protistology closer to hydrobiology, geology, petrography, and other related sciences. Along the lines of protozoology and phycology, protistology connects, on one hand, with zoology, and on the other, with botany. From a general biological point of view, the significance of protistology as the science of unicellular organisms is very great. Among protists, there are extremely convenient objects for studying the fundamental properties of the cell. Max Schultze's theory of protoplasm was created based on the study of protists. In his dispute with Reichert over whether the cell membrane is an obligatory element of the cell, protists (Foraminifera) again served as the decisive object. The physicochemical properties of protoplasm, the origin and development of cellular structures, the essence of tropisms, and a number of other questions of general biological significance are being developed especially energetically using protistological material. Protistology also provides extensive material on issues of variability and heredity that are highly relevant to medicine. Long-term modifications were originally established using protistological objects. It was also on protists that the fundamental questions of cellular adaptation to poisons and basic immunological problems (seroresistant races of trypanosomes and spirochetes) were studied. The theory of partial cell functions, developed by Ehrlich, was built mainly on the study of parasitic protists. The history of protistology, which traces its origins to Kircher, Leeuwenhoek, and Ehrenberg, merges to a significant extent with the history of its branches: microbiology, bacteriology, and protozoology, while adjoining the history of botany and zoology. Among the founders of modern protistology, in addition to the aforementioned scientists, one should include A. Pascher, the author of a number of fundamental works on the systematics of protists, and M. Hartmann, editors of the Archiv für Protistenkunde. Among Russian protistologists of a predominantly botanical orientation, one should name Tsenkovsky, Voronin, Gorozhankin, and Arnoldi. The first course in protistology in Russia was taught by Elpatievsky at Moscow University in 1910. In 1921, the Russian Protistological Society was founded in Moscow. (See also Protozoology.) Sh. Moshkovsky