NOTES ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE WHITE 

 AND ORANGE STAPHYLOCOCCI 



C.-E. A. WINSLOW, WILLIAM ROTHBERG and ELIZABETH I. PARSONS 



Department of Public Health, American Museum of Natural History, New York 



Received for publication, September 16, 1919 



INTRODUCTION 



The white and orange cocci of the skin were first isolated in 

 pure culture by Rosenbach (1884) and described as var. aureus 

 and var. albus of a species which he named Staphylococcus pyog- 

 enes. In later years such systematic bacteriologists as Migula 

 (1900) and Chester (1901) discarded the generic name suggested 

 by Rosenbach and grouped these organisms along with the large 

 series of yellow and red cocci under the genus, Micrococcus. 

 For some time all thought of any important differences correlated 

 with variations in pigment production appeared to be abandoned; 

 and yellow, as well as white and orange, cocci found upon the 

 skin were commonly classed by medical observers as varieties of 

 a single species. 



In 1908 the Winslows showed that, in the case of the yellow 

 and red chromogens at least, the type of pigment production 

 was associated with other characteristics of fundamental syste- 

 matic importance. They made it clear that the white and orange 

 cocci belong to a series of cocci, including the streptococci and 

 diplococci, which are essentially parasitic in nature, Gram posi- 

 tive and active in fermentative power, while the yellow and red 

 forms (including the sarcinae) are normally found in environ- 

 ments outside the human body, are Gram-negative and exhibit 

 a much more restricted fermentative activity. 



The Gram-positive, acid-forming parasitic cocci, which occur 

 in irregular growth masses rather than in pairs or chains, and 

 which produce a fairly abundant growth on media, were again 



145 



