(b) : Symptoms of malaria first appear several days after the infection of the malaria parasite in man. This interval of time or the incubation period is utilized by the parasites to increase their progeny. To establish malarial symptoms, it is necessary that a large number of organisms must continue erythrocytic cycle at a time. A healthy person acquires infection when a female Anopheles mosquito, containing infective stages of parasite (sporozoites) in its salivary glands, bites him for sucking his blood. Once within the human blood, the sporozoites get into liver to invade the hepatic cells. Here they multiply asexually by schizogony. Liver schizogony has two phases, preerythrocytic and exo-erythrocytic: Pre-erythrocytic phase : After penetrating a hepatic cell each sporozoite becomes a cryptozoite. It grows for a number of days and becomes a spherical and non-pigmented schizont. It divides by schizogony (multiple fission) and forms a large number of uninucleate cells, the cryptomerozoites. During preerythrocytic schizogony, blood remains sterile and its inoculation does not produce infection. Exo-erythrocyic phase : Cryptomerozoites enter fresh liver cells to become metacryptozoites. They undergo schizogony similar to the previous one producing enormous number of metacryptomerozoites. Metacryptomerozoites, after escaping into blood stream, invade the erythrocytes or red blood corpuscles. This starts the erythrocytic schizogony. With erythrocytic schizogony, the symptoms of malaria starts appearing.