Section I 



SANITARY SCIENCE AND HYGIENE. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT: 



W. PERRIN NORRIS, M.D.. D.P.H.. 



Comriwmvealth Director of Quaranline, Melbourjic. 



'[The text of the President's Address was not available when we 

 w-ent to press.] 



PAPERS READ IN SECTION I. 



L— THE BIOCHEMICAL METHOD OF BACTERIOLOGICAL 

 ANALYSIS. 



(With especial refere.nxe to the Colon Bacilli and the Diphtheroides) 



.By BURTON BRADLEY, M.B., Ch.M. (Syd.), M.R.C.S. (Eng.), L.R.C.P. (I.ond.). D.P.H. (Lond.), 

 Assistant Microbiologist, Bureau of Microbiology, Sydney. 



It was once said of bacteriologists by a scientific man of another 

 "branch, " Oh, they simply make cultures and look at them, and 

 there it is finished." 



As a matter of fact the truth is very far from this. With a 

 few exceptions the bacteria — and by this term I include all the 

 members of the class Schizomycetes (bacilli, cocci, vibrios strepto- 

 thrices) — are so morphologicall}^ similar that, armed with the best 

 of microscopes, we should make but slight headway in our attempt 

 to differentiate them into classes, far less to isolate individuals. 

 Cultures also are only available in certain cases, and our methods 

 of culture must be modified by the data given us by numerous 

 other methods of investigation. 



It is difficult to enumerate all the means that have been tried — 

 some successfully, some unsucessfully — to aid in the classification 

 of the huge group of bacteria. 



In all cases the morphology must be considered, and here we 

 get a first separation into three more or less distinct groups 

 — bacilli, cocci, vibrios (rod, round and curved forms re- 

 spectively), and by considering their arrangement some further 

 separation is obtained, especially amongst the cocci, into staphylo- 

 cocci (bunched forms), streptococci (chain forms), diplococci (twin 

 forms). There are also streptobacilli (sti^eptothrices) and diplo- 

 bacilli. 



