95 
The reaction was but little changed. Glucose and saccharose were fer- 
mented but not lactose. Indol was rapidly produced. The growth on 
potato was abundant, grayish, and moist. The other colonies, which had 
a different appearance and which developed on the plate cultures, proved 
to be those of Staphylococcus aureus; they were not by any means so 
numerous as those of the bacillus just described. Two guinea pigs were 
inoculated intraperitoneally and one rabbit intravenously, each with one- 
third of a twenty-four agar slant culture of the bacillus, suspended in 
saline solution. The animals remained alive and no pathological effects 
were noted. A small area of the skin over the abdomen of a monkey was 
shaved and the animal inoculated subcutaneously with 1 cubic centimeter 
of the bouillon culture from the human lesion. This culture was known 
not to be pure; it contained, besides large numbers of bacilli, a few cocci. 
The animal died from asthenia three weeks after the inoculation. It had 
been long in captivity and was somewhat emaciated at the time of its 
death. At autopsy, cultures taken from the heart’s blood, liver, and spleen 
all remained sterile. On the abdomen, near the point of inoculation, was 
a small nodule, measuring about 1 centimeter in diameter, over which 
the skin was reddened and almost perforated. On incising this area an 
ulcer, the edges of which were ragged, infiltrated, and undermined, was 
found in the subcutaneous tissue and corium. A small amount of pus 
was present. Many cultures from this lesion developed a large number 
of colonies of Staphylococcus aureus, but only a few of the bacillus above 
described. This latter organism was regarded as a variety of the Proteus 
group. On account of its apparent nonpathogenicity for animals, no 
further attempt was made to identify it more closely. 
The tissues from the human lesion were hardened in Zenker’s solution 
and stained in hematoxylin-eosin, methylene-blue-eosin, carbol fuchsin- 
methylene-blue, Weigert’s stain, and Wright’s modification of Roma- 
nowsky’s method. A histological examination of the sections reveals, 
usually upon the surface of the ulcer, a dense homogeneous layer, in 
which the structure of the tissue can no longer be recognized and which 
stains diffusely red with eosin. Scattered here and there through this 
mass may be seen numbers of polymorphonuclear leucocytes and in places 
a large amount of fibrin can be detected. In the upper portion of this 
necrotic tissue the bodies of the cells do not stain at all, the polymor- 
phonuclei in many instances appearing as if they were lying in clear 
vacuoles; in other cases the cell protoplasm is stained partly or wholly 
light pink. A little deeper in the tissue the number of polymorphonu- 
clear leucocytes is greatly increased and the protoplasm of these cells 
stains well with eosin. Many red-blood corpuscles as well as many fine 
threads and coarser fibrils, lying between the cells, can be distinguished. 
These fibers, in specimens stained by the Weigert method, are seen to be 
fibrin. In other places, in this portion of the tissue, a dense coagulation of 
the liquid exudate (evidently first secreted) has also taken place, in which 
