14 BIOLOGY OF PNEUMOCOCCUS 



other rabbits and mice. The infection was a septicemia and never a 

 localized process as claimed by Friedlander. Klein had no hesita- 

 tion in using the name Pneumokokkus, in the title of his paper. 



Maguire (1884), 855 in England, presented before the British 

 Medical Association three preparations to illustrate the micrococ- 

 cus of pneumonia. One was a section of a pneumonic lung, another 

 a section of kidney from a case of pneumonia, and the third, spu- 

 tum from a similar patient. Employing both methylene blue and 

 the Gram stain, he found capsules on the cocci, although they were 

 not always present. Maguire exhibited the specimens as illustrat- 

 ing Friedlander's micrococcus but, lacking cultural or inoculation 

 experience, showed caution in saying that the question of the role 

 of Pneumococcus must remain in abeyance until more data were 

 forthcoming. 



In the same year, Foa and Rattone, 464 working with a pure cul- 

 ture of Friedlander's "Pneumococcus" obtained from his colleague, 

 Frobenius, duplicated Friedlander's observations even to the re- 

 sistance of rabbits to its invasion. They confirmed the results with 

 cultures isolated from the lung of a pneumonia patient, and were 

 the first to succeed in producing meningeal infection in guinea 

 pigs by inhalation, recovering "capsule-cocci" from the exudate 

 on the pia mater.* 



By 1885, Sternberg 1319 was ready to state that the pneumonia- 

 coccus of Friedlander, the Microbe septichnique du saliva of Pas- 

 teur, and the organism he himself had isolated from normal saliva 

 were not only the same but were probably the cause of pneumonia.f 

 His conclusion bears quoting: "It seems extremely probable that 

 this micrococcus is concerned in the etiology of croupous pneu- 

 monia, and that the infectious nature of this disease is due to its 

 presence in the fibrinous exudate into the pulmonary alveoli." Its 



* Jiirgensen699 reviewed the literature up to his time (1884) and concluded, 

 "True pneumonia is an infectious disease, which principally but not exclu- 

 sively, affects the lungs." 



t Sternberg, after seeing the Friedlander culture in Koch's laboratory in 

 1885, changed his mind, and in 18871320 sa id he was in error in thinking that 

 this and his saliva-coccus were identical. He then tentatively changed the name 

 to Micrococcus pneumoniae crouposae. 



