ON THE BACILLUS OF MORGAN NO. I 1 — A META- 

 COLON-BACILLUS 



TH. THJ0TTA 



From Dr. med. F. G. Gades pathological institute, Bergen, Norway. Director: Sr. 



med. M. Haaland 



Received for publication August 17, 1919 



INTRODUCTION 



The bacillus of Morgan was first described in the years 1905 

 and 1906, when Morgan found it in stools from cases of summer 

 diarrhoea in children. The investigations of Morgan were car- 

 ried on by Morgan and Ledingham (1909), who consider this 

 bacillus one of the main causes of the diarrhoea of infants. 



According to the description of the English authors the 

 bacillus of Morgan has the following characters: 



It is a Gram negative bacillus of the size of a dysentery or 

 colon bacillus. Ordinarily it is motile, but can occasionally 

 show immobility. It produces acid and gas in media containing 

 glucose, but does not ferment the other ordinarily used sugar 

 media, such as lactose, maltose, sucrose and mannitol. It pro- 

 duces indol in beef broth, but does not coagulate milk or liquefy 

 gelatine. 



The production of gas in glucose may be so slight that it can 

 only be observed in agar deep cultures and there may even be 

 no production of gas at all. 



Serologically, it was impossible to make a convenient classi- 

 fication of strains of this organism, as the English authors found 

 heterologous strains inagglutinable in a serum produced with a 

 typical strain. In sera from patients they occasionally found 

 agglutination of the homologous strains in the dilution 1 : 40. 



1 Partly published in Medicinish Revue, no. 4, 1918. 



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