386 BACTERIA IN MILK 



vision, and one of the cultures used was supplied by Hueppe. His observations proved 

 useful in straightening out the confusion in that his descriptions show that he was 

 dealing with organisms of the colon group, not the organism of normal sour milk. 

 Grotenfelt named other cultures that he secured Bacterium acidi lactici and Strepto- 

 coccus acidi lactici. The latter organism is important, as Lehmann and Neumann ac- 

 cept Grotenfelt's description of this streptococcus as the earliest description of the or- 

 ganism causing the normal souring of milk even as late as the 1927 edition of their 

 Manual. Inasmuch as the organism causing this souring occurs, as Lister states, in 

 pairs, threes, and fours in milk, whereas Grotenfelt's streptococcus was found "in 

 klumpig gewordener Milch aus Finland" and is described as occurring in milk in long 

 chains, it seems probable that the latter was the mastitis streptococcus rather than 

 Streptococcus lactis. 



It was not until five years after Grotenfelt's work that Leichmann first published 

 the statement that the organism that he found in milk souring normally was like Lis- 

 ter's, and not like Hueppe's organism. The following year Leichmann' named his or- 

 ganism Bacterium lactis acidi, the sour-milk bacterium, to distinguish it from Bacillus 

 acidi lactici, the lactic acid bacillus. This unfortunate name, which was already pre- 

 empted by Marpmann, has helped to produce a long list of synonyms. 



Giinther and Thierfelder,' working independently, likewise found that the sour- 

 milk bacterium did not have the characters ascribed to it by Hueppe, though it did 

 show the characters mentioned by Lister. They continued the use of the name that 

 had been given to Hueppe's organism, however, as did Esten^ also in the following 

 year. Esten's work is of interest to us chiefly because it represented the first American 

 work with this organism, and led to confusion in the naming of the sour-milk strepto- 

 coccus in several papers and books from H. W. Conn's-" laboratory during the subse- 

 quent ten years. 



The German bacteriologists were more fortunate in that Lehmann and Neumann^ 

 in the first edition of their Manual in 1896 were quick to see the mistake that Giinther 

 and Thierfelder had made in regard to the name, and they proposed the new binomial 

 Bacterium giintheri for the sour-milk organism that these authors had found. Inde- 

 pendently, Kruse"' in Flugge's textbook proposed the binomial Bacillus lacticus. The 

 name Bacterium giintheri came into general use in Germany and nearby countries 

 during the next few years, whereas Leichmann's name came into more general use in 

 America and in some other places. Lister's name was completely ignored during this 

 period. 



Adametz^ in Austria, following up the work of Duclaux on cheese ripening, had in 

 1889 described a series of bacteria that he found in cheese, among them his "Bacillus 



'Leichmann, G.: Centralbl. f. Bakleriol., Abt. II, 2, 777. 1896. 



^ Giinther, C, and Thierfelder, H.: Arch. f. Hyg., 23, 164. 1895. 



3 Esten, W. M.: Slorrs Agric. Expcr. Ski. {Conn.) Ann. Rep. for i8g6, p. 44. 1897. 



■t Conn, H. W.: ibid, for iSgg, p. 52. igoo. 



5 Lehmann, K. B., and Neumann, R. ().: Baklrriologisclie Diagnoslik (2 vols.; ist ed.). 1S96. 



^ Kruse, W.: in Flugge's Die Mikroorganismcn {2 vols.). Leipzig, 1896. 



'Adametz, L.: Landw. Jahrh., 18 ,227. 1889. 



