SPIEAL BODIES IN BACTERIAL CULTURES 373 



to be similar to the spiral bodies under discussion, but the 

 authors found them always attached to the organisms. 



Malvoz (1902) working with Wathelet found spiral bodies in a 

 culture of Bacterium coli isolated from the stools of a typhoid 

 patient. Preparations stained after Loeffler's method were 

 shown by them to Nuel (1893) who considered them identical 

 with spirals which he had found almost ten years earlier in cultures 

 made from a bacterial disease of the cornea. Like Novy he re- 

 garded them as individual flagella calling them "cils geants. " 

 Malvoz, however, inclined to Loeffler's view and referred to 

 Migula's description of their formation as the best. He called 

 them "cils composees, " following the terminology of Sakharoff 

 in preference to that of Nuel. 



That these spirals were known to bacteriologists at the end of 

 the last century is proved not only by Fliigge's (1896) brief 

 reference to them and Migula's (1897) account of their formation, 

 but by the remark of Zettnow (1899), ''Geisselzopfe habe ich in 

 den jungen anaeroben Culturen nicht beobachtet. " In the atlas 

 accompanying the first edition of Kolle and Wassermann (1902) 

 were published Zettnow 's photographs of small tufts of flagella 

 from a pure culture of an unknow^n bacterium and of a very large 

 tuft of flagella from Sarcina agilis. More recent references may 

 be found in the texts of von Hibler (1908), of Kolle and Wasser- 

 mann (1912), and of Friedberger and Pfeiffer (1919). 



Koga and Otsubo (1919) while attempting to get pure cultures 

 of smegma spirochetes, found spirochete-like spiral bodies in cul- 

 tures of saprophytic bacilli. The occurrence of such forms in 

 bacterial cultures was evidently unknow^n to them and the result of 

 their investigation led them to conclude that they were ' ' nothing 

 more than an unusual development of the flagella or parts of the 

 bacterial bodies." They worked chiefly with Bacillus subtilis 

 but gave a list of other organisms, in cultures of which spiral 

 bodies were also found. 



For a number of years it has been the custom in this laboratory 

 to keep certain cultures in tubes closed with sealing wax. In order 

 to find out the general effect on culture growth of such a method 

 a series of experiments with a number of spore-bearers was begun 



