SPIRAL BODIES IN BACTERIAL CULTURES 



LAURA FLORENCE 



From the Department oj Animal Pathology of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical 

 Research, Princeton, New Jersey 



Received for publication November 12, 1920 



During the winter of 1918-1919, in the course of some work with 

 spore-bearing bacteria, spiral bodies resembhng spirochetes were 

 frequently found in cultures. When these were shown to Dr. 

 Theobald Smith, he suggested that they were clusters of detached 

 flagella such as had been seen by him at different times in cultures 

 of anaerobes. Two interesting coincidences occurred at this time. 

 The first was the receipt from an Institution of photographs 

 of similar spiral bodies with the suggestion that they might be 

 Vibrio fetus of infectious abortion in cattle, and the second was 

 the publication of an investigation into spiral bodies in bacterial 

 cultures by Koga and Otsubo (1919a). Since these authors have 

 discussed the phenomenon as one hitherto undescribed and since 

 their publication has more recently (1919b) appeared in Japan, it 

 seems appropriate to call attention to earlier references and de- 

 scribe briefly the conditions under which these spiral bodies have 

 now been found. 



LoefBer (1889) first saw these spiral bodies when staining the 

 flagella of the typhoid bacillus and the potato bacillus, but did 

 not recognize their true nature until a year later (1890), when he 

 found them in three different blood serum cultures of the bacillus 

 of black leg. The latter were much larger than those seen in the 

 typhoid cultures and he published, along with the description, a 

 photograph of the preparation. At the same time he referred to 

 a microphotograph, published by Frankel and Pfeiffer, of the 

 bacillus of malignant oedema in which spiral threads passed out 

 from the organism just as he had found them in the typhoid bacil- 

 lus. Three years later Sakharoff (1893) described and photo- 



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JOCRNAL OF BACTEBIOLOGT, VOL. VI, NO. 4 



