BACTERIACE.E : THE BACILLUS OF DIPHTHERIA 297 



obtained cultures of the organism on blood agar and, employing 

 these cultures as an antigen, they demonstrated an antibody 

 in the blood of patients by means of the complement-fixation 

 test. Klimenko 1 has further succeeded in producing a chronic 

 catarrh of the respiratory passages in monkeys and puppies by 

 applying pure cultures to the tracheal mucosa. The bacillus 

 is a minute rod, motionless, stained with moderate difficulty, 

 and Gram-negative. It occurs in large numbers between the 

 cilia of the epithelial cells lining the trachea and bronchi in cases 

 of whooping cough where it mechanically 2 interferes with the 



FIG. 124. Koch-Weeks bacillus in muco-pus from conjunctivitis. X 1000. 

 (From Park and Williams after Weeks.} 



action of the cilia and gives rise to irritation. It is an obligate 

 aerobe and at first grows well only on media containing blood, 

 ascitic fluid or other protein. Later it adapts itself to artificial 

 culture on ordinary media. Gelatin is not liquefied. 



Bacillus (Bacterium) Influenzae. Pfeiffer in 1892 isolated a 

 small bacillus 0.25^ wide by 0.5 to 2.0^1 long from the bronchial 

 secretion in cases of epidemic influenza. The bacillus occurs in 

 enormous numbers in acute uncomplicated cases of influenza 

 in the nasal and bronchial mucus. It is non-motile, aerobic, 



1 Centralbl.f. Bakt. Orig., 1909, Bd. XLVIII, S. 64-76. 



2 Mallory: Pertussis: The Histological Lesion in the Respiratory Tract, Journ. 

 Med. Rsch., 1912, Vol. XXVII, pp. 115-124; Mallory, Hornor and Henderson, 

 Journ. Med. Rsch., 1913, Vol. XXVII, pp. 391-397. 



