He had retrieved his streptococcus from an instance of 209 

 prostatitis. The ever conscientious observer added to its his- 

 tory this parenthetic warning: "It is not claimed here that 

 there was any connection between the organism isolated and 

 the condition of the patient. ..." From a single colony — in 

 bacteriology each such is presumed to be the family born of 

 a single organism of fixed type — Wherry inoculated a deep 

 tube of culture fluid. To his surprise, growth occurred at two 

 sharply defined but different levels in his column of "soup," 

 a first near the top and a second, near the bottom. The organ- 

 isms living at the top obviously liked some air; those in the 

 bottoms, shunned it. (Wherry said that the latter were 

 aerophobe — air fearing — which so-descriptive term, either 

 Beijerinck or he invented.) A single "strain" had given rise 

 to two totally different biological products! Here is how 

 Wherry reacted: 



A similar phenomenon has been recorded by Wittneben. We 

 were inclined to believe that Wittneben had been working 

 with a mixed culture. It seemed extremely improbable to us 

 that the culture of a single species, all the individuals of which 

 were grown under the same conditions, could be composed of 

 descendants adapted to such widely varying oxygen require- 

 ments. Observation has reversed our preconceived ideas. 



Wherry transferred his pure bred microaerophile and aero- 

 phobe strains to new culture grounds kept under identical 

 conditions of air pressure. Both "tended to throw off vari- 

 ants," Wherry found. And now he injected each of his two 

 strains into the circulation of animals. His findings were 

 "inconclusive," he said. Fact was, the aerobic strain had not 

 diseased his animals; the aerophobe produced "marked con- 

 gestion of the tissues about the joints which were full of bloody 

 fluid." A rather violent picture of acute rheumatism the by- 

 stander would say! And rather startling proof that micro- 

 organisms tend to localize, to grow and to make sick those 

 portions of anatomy where lack of oxygen and therefore 

 optimal conditions for their growth are most apparent. 



Pressure of oxygen again showed itself the main factor in 

 the production of the various "forms" of the diphtheria 

 bacillus. Many such had been described — long and short, pyri- 



