S38 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



tion of the cells which contained them — a time-honoured criticism 

 against many cell-observations and often as unreasonable as the 

 observations themselves. A few thought that " there might be 

 something in it," while the majority awaited further develop- 

 ments. 



Then the German Government sent a rising Berlin University 

 Professor named Schaudinn to report on Siegel's work, which 

 probably was but an elaboration of that done by Losdorfer and 

 Stassano some years before and obviously based on the teaching 

 of Guanieri. Schaudinn discredited Siegel's claim. But a few 

 weeks later he published the existence, as a new factor, of 

 minute, tailed, snake-like bodies found in syphilis ; and these he 

 claimed as his own discovery and stated were the cause of 

 syphilis (Arb. aus d. kaiser. Gesund, 1905 and Deut. med. IVoch. 

 1905). These objects, which, owing to their stained appearance 

 and their capabilities of motion, he named Spirochceta pallida, 



Spirochceta pallida as seen sometimes by dark-ground illumination. 



very closely resembled part of those which Siegel had alread}' 

 described. But Schaudinn ignored Siegel's protests and 

 explained the spirochete as his own observation to Metchnikoff 

 and Roux — the co-directors of the Pasteur Institute at Paris — 

 who inoculated syphilis into apes and found the same snake-like 

 bodies in the disease produced. Thus it was Metchnikoff and 

 Roux who brought forward proof, and the world accepted 

 Schaudinn's Spirochceta pallida as the causative agent of syphilis; 

 Siegel was forgotten. 



For four years, the scientific and medical profession examined 

 the Spirochceta pallida in all its aspects. Its length was described, 

 its breadth, its curls, its twists, the way in which it multiplies 

 was pictured ; and when facts were not forthcoming the imagina- 

 tion was drawn upon. Writers wrote about long forms, short 

 forms, fat forms, thin forms, round forms, oblong forms, oval 

 forms, dividing forms, double forms. It was described vividly 

 how the spirochsete, with venomous malice aforethought, pricks 

 cells with its tail and destroys them, how a single spirochaete 

 could enter the human brain, remain quiescent there for twenty 



