S82 TIMOTHY RICHARDS LEWIS. 



D. — The Vegetable Organisms in the Blood in Recurrent Fever. 



There is one other disease in which vegetable organisms have 

 been found in the blood, namely, recurrent fever {Febris or Ti/phus 

 recurrens). In this affection also the organisms belong to the 

 lower fungi-group, the schizomyceicB — that is to say, the fungi 

 which multiply by cleavage, in contradistinction to the groups 

 which multiply (1) by sprouting or (2) by germination. The 

 fission-fungi, however, present themselves in this disease in a 

 different form from that witnessed in the preceding, anthracoid, 

 class of affections. In the latter the organisms recognisable 

 range from the spherical bacterium to the bacillus or vibrio- 

 bacillus form — the bacillus being by far the predominating form ; 

 but in recurrent fever the representative of tlie scliizomijcetes is a 

 spirillum — a form of the fission-fungi which, so far as I am 

 aware, has not hitherto been detected in any of the anthracoid 

 affections referred to in the preceding pages. 



We owe the discovery of this organism in the blood to Vir- 

 chow^s former assistant, the late Dr. Obermeier. They were 

 found in the blood and also in the mouth of persons suffering 

 from this form of fever, and minutely described by him in 1873.^ 

 It would appear that this observer had already seen them as far 

 back as 1868. In all the cases observed by him they were 

 present in the blood during the height of the fever, but were 

 absent during the remission or intermission, as the case might 

 be; nor were they observed, except rarely, after the crisis. 

 Obermeier describes them as fine fibriue-like threads, equal in 

 length to the diameter of from 1 1 to 6 red blood-corpuscles ; and 

 manifesting screw-like, progressive movements, which may con- 

 tinue from one to eight hours after removal from the body. The 

 inoculative experiments which he undertook, consisting of the 

 injection of spirillum-blood of fever patients into the veins of 

 dogs, rabbits, and guinea-pigs, proved abortive, nor was there 

 any effect produced by the injection, by means of a subcutaneous 

 syringe, of small quantities of such blood into the bodies of 

 healthy persons. 



Ob§rmeier's observations as to the existence of the spirilla in 

 blood in this kind of fever were speedily confirmed by numerous 

 observers, and the negative results which followed his attempts at 

 inoculating persons and animals hkewise characterised the 

 attempts of several who followed in his footsteps. Motschut- 

 kowsky, however, states that, although he also had failed to 

 inoculate animals, yet he had succeeded in inoculating persons 



^ ' Centralblatt fiir die mediciniscbe Wissenscliaffen/ No. 10, March, 

 1873, aud ia subsequent uumberb during the same year. 



