12 BIOLOGY OF PNEUMOCOCCUS 



despite the conciliatory attitude of Friedlander, which led to con- 

 fused conceptions which endure to the present day and which can 

 never be clarified. Fraenkel, in a paper published in 1885, 407 virtu- 

 ally acknowledged that the coccus described by Friedlander and 

 the one described by himself were identical, but complained that he 

 saw it first. It has long been the verdict that the organism de- 

 scribed by Friedlander in 1882 and 1883 was not Pneuniococcus 

 but the bacillus which later came to bear his name. This verdict 

 would deprive Friedlander of any credit for the original isolation 

 of Pneumococcus from lobar pneumonia and bestow it on Fraenkel 

 who, without it, still has the honor of giving the first complete de- 

 scriptions of Pneumococcus and whose studies proved for the first 

 time the etiological relationship between this coccus and lobar 

 pneumonia in man. 



The facts given in Friedlander's first and second papers admit 

 of more than one interpretation. The organism which Friedlander 

 first described was an elliptical, or round, encapsulated coccus oc- 

 curring principally in pairs. It was isolated from nearly all of 

 fifty cases of acute pneumonia and was Gram-positive. It need 

 scarcely be pointed out that these are characters of Pneumococcus 

 and not of B. friedlanderi* The culture was exquisitely virulent 

 for mice. However, the lack of pathogenicity for rabbits, its abil- 

 ity to grow on gelatin at room temperature with the formation of 

 nail-like colonies are not characteristic of typical pneumococci. 

 Perhaps Friedlander, in the face of strong opposition, weakened 

 his position by acknowledging that the cycle of isolation of the 

 coccus from man, the production of infection in animals, and its 

 subsequent recovery could not be accomplished in every case of 

 pneumonia. Possibly another factor tending to detract from the 

 true import of his discovery may have been his suggestion that 

 there might be different forms of Pneumococcus, or that pneu- 



* Inasmuch as the earlier name, Bacillus friedlanderi, occurs in the great 

 majority of the original publications reviewed, it, rather than the newer name, 

 Klebsiella pneumoniae, will be used in this text. 



