HISTORY OF PNEUMOCOCCUS: 1875-1890 11 



own experimental experience that neither the capsule nor the nail- 

 form colony was a differential character and that bacteriological 

 examination of the blood of pneumonia patients was not of diag- 

 nostic value. From Platonow's notes it would seem that he used 

 mixed cultures of bacilli and cocci, so his doubts were well founded. 



In April of that year (1884), Fraenkel 466 presented the first of 

 a series of studies that were to make the name Fraenkel and Pneu- 

 mococcus almost inseparable. In a discussion of the cause of pneu- 

 monia before the Kongress filr innere Medizin in Berlin, Fraenkel 

 displayed a human trait that at least enlivens the sober literature 

 if it does not always bring the desired personal reward. Fraenkel 

 complained that he should receive some of the credit for the dis- 

 covery of Pneumococcus. He had begun experiments six months 

 before Friedlander's report was made public, and had only delayed 

 the announcement because his results differed from Friedlander's 

 and because he wished to recheck them ! He had scored on his fel- 

 low countryman by infecting rabbits with the coccus where Fried- 

 liinder failed, but his further observations had not been so positive. 

 There was a difference in the pathogenicity of some of the mate- 

 rials which he used; colony appearance and capsule formation 

 were not constant characters and, moreover, other bacterial spe- 

 cies had capsules. Apparently unaware of Sternberg's experiments, 

 Fraenkel 468 had missed the meaning of his success in producing a 

 fatal septicemia in rabbits with normal sputum and the subsequent 

 recovery by cultivation on coagulated blood serum of encapsulated 

 diplococci from the blood of the animals. He had hesitated to draw 

 any comparison between the diplococci from pneumonic material 

 and his "sputum septicemia coccus." Likewise, he had ventured no 

 outright statement that his and Friedlander's organisms were sepa- 

 rate species ; in fact, he gave the impression that they were differ- 

 ent forms of the same organism. Friedlander, in the discussion of 

 Fraenkel's paper, suggested that there might be several organisms 

 causing pneumonia, so he, for the while, had the last word. 



Here began a controversy, fomented principally by Fraenkel, 



