134 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



with the Casselman Company's new methylene blue. It will be seen 

 that these bodies have a distinctly spore-like appearance although they 

 differ from spores pioper in that several may be present in one single 

 bacillary rod. 



Within the last few months bacilli presenting the same "diph- 

 theroid" appearance have been isolated by Bunting, Rosenau and 

 others^ from the enlarged lymph glands in the remarkable condition 

 known as Hodgkin's disease, or lymphogranulomatosis. Some years 

 ago Frankel and Much studying material from this disease, discovered 

 and figured in the enlarged glands granules arid occasional beaded 

 bacilli which now are known as "Much's granules," closely resembling 

 the granules and beaded forms of the tubercle bacillus, and at last 

 year's meeting of the German Pathological Society many of the speak- 

 ers supported the view that these represented an attenuated form of 

 the B. tuberculosis. The organism isolated by Bunting has, however, 

 such different growth characters that at the present time we must 

 regard it as belonging to a different species. Through the great kind- 

 ness of Prof. Rhea, I have been enabled to study and employ a culture 

 of these diphtheroid bacilli isolated by him from a case of Hodgkin's 

 disease that occurred at the Montreal General Hospital. (Plate 

 IV). 



This very fact that the bodies under debate are apt to be multiple 

 in the course of a single bacillary rod, the further fact that both the 

 tubercle bacillus and the B. diphtheroid (which also possesses meta- 

 chromatic beading in many of its strains) show, under certain conditions, 

 well-marked branching, has led to a general consensus of opinion of 

 late years that these two species are to be placed among the so- 

 called "higher bacteria" close to the group of Strep tothrices, of which 

 the Actinomyces hominis, the organism of actinomycosis or "lumpy 

 jaw" is the best known example. Now these streptothrices while very 

 minute, have all the characters of the lowest moulds or so-called 

 hyphomycetes. They form a densely filled branching mycelium, and 

 the peripheral threads are liable to break up into a succession of beaded 

 gonidia; at other times the fine hyphae break up into bacillary forms. 

 It is becoming thus not unusual to compare the beaded forms in the 

 tubercle bacillus with the more typical gonidia-like bodies of the 

 streptothrices. 



THE THERMAL DEATH POINT OF THE GONIDIA OF MOULDS. 



It seemed thus interesting to observe whether the asexual fructi- 

 fications, spores, or gonidia, of the commoner moulds possess the same 



1 1 am indebted to Prof. Adami for this description of the organism associated 

 with Hodgkin's disease. 



