344 IVAN C. HALL 



Abroad, Lumiere and Chevrotier (1913) have advocated a mix- 

 ture of beer wort and albumin sterilized in the autoclave, to 

 which however, the addition of sterile horse serum is said to be 

 advantageous, though not indispensable. Upon this medium 

 gonococcus cultures were found to be viable at remarkably low 

 temperatures (Lumiere and Chevrotier, 1914). 



Emile Weil and Noire (1913) have also suggested an agar 

 containing whey, peptone, saccharose and urea. I have failed 

 in several attempts to corroborate their claim that gonococci 

 would grow upon this medium. 



I have not tried the cultivation of gonococci upon the egg broth 

 of Besredka and Jupille (1913) nor according to the method of 

 Ohlmacher (1915) upon Loeffler's blood serum but in several 

 tests upon the starch agar of Vedder (1915) I have found it to 

 be one of the most promising media. However, the growth, 

 while possibly less long lived upon testicular infusion agar, 

 is so much more abundant that the use of the latter is recommend- 

 ed for the preparation of gonococcic vaccine. It should prove 

 equally valuable for the preparation of antigens to be used in 

 the alexin fixation test but this remains to be determined. 



CULTURES 



My strains of gonococci came originally from clinically typical 

 cases of urethritis and epididymitis, having been isolated upon 

 blood agar and cultivated in some cases as long as two years on 

 ascitic agar. All were typical gram negative biscuit shaped 

 diplococci, showing sparse growth upon rabbit blood or ascitic 

 agar and failure of growth, at least in the second subculture, 

 upon plain agar at 37°C. These have been our criteria and while 

 we have had a realization quickened by the work of Broughton- 

 Alcock (1914) that we might occasionally exclude true gonococci 

 thereby we have not hesitated to insist that our media should 

 be tested particularly on the less saprophytic strains. At the 

 conclusion of each experiment therefore the purity of each 

 culture was checked by gram stain and failure of growth upon 

 plain agar at 37°C. 



