HISTORY OF PNEUMOCOCCUS: 1875-1890 19 



understanding of his work by the German bacteriologists, pre- 

 sented his views (1887) in a paper 1320 in the Deutsche medizinische 

 Wochenschrift. He first admitted his original error in thinking 

 that his saliva-coccus and the organism of Friedlander were the 

 same ; then went on to say that if this diplococcus could finally be 

 proved to be the cause of true pneumonia, it should be called Mi- 

 crococcus pneumoniae crouposae, but until that time the name he 

 originally proposed should stand. This statement aroused Fraen- 

 kel, 471 and a month later, again feeling that he had been slighted, 

 he took issue in print with the American, and made another plea 

 for priority. Fraenkel characterized Sternberg's work as incom- 

 plete, made capital out of the confusion of the Sternberg coccus 

 with Friedlander's bacterium, and disposed of Sternberg's objec- 

 tion to Fraenkel's name, Pneumoniemikrococcus. 



Foa and Bordoni-Uffreduzzi 460 " 2 put in a bid for credit as be- 

 ing the first to report (1886) the discovery of the organism to 

 which they gave the name Diplococcus lanceolatus in a case of pri- 

 mary cerebrospinal meningitis. They also reported the isolation of 

 the organism from every case in an epidemic of the disease,* as well 

 as from cases of polyarthritis and from the blood of the placenta 

 in a patient aborting during pneumonia. Ortmann, 1037 too, isolated 

 pneumococci from meningeal infections, and in so doing felt that 

 he should be acclaimed as the first to obtain "capsule-cocci" on 

 artificial media. Infection of the parotid glands was another mani- 

 festation of the invasiveness of Pneumococcus, two instances in 

 which parotitis occurred being reported by Testi, 1388 " 90 who also 

 noted subcutaneous abscesses as a further complication of pneu- 

 monia. 



More important than the priority claim of Foa and Bordoni- 

 Uffreduzzi, however, was their achievement in immunizing rabbits 

 by subcutaneous injection at three or four-day intervals, first with 

 attenuated material, then with cultures of increasing virulence. 

 The animals thus treated became resistant to inoculation with 



* It is probable that the epidemic was one of meningococcal meningitis. 



