CHAPTER XX 

 RELAPSING FEVER 



SPIRILLUM OBERMEIERI OR SPIROCH^TA OBERMEIERI OR SPIRO- 

 RECURRENTIS (OBERMEIER) 



General Characteristics. An elongate, flexible, flagellated, non-sporogenous, 

 actively motile spiral organism, pathogenic for man and monkeys, susceptible 

 of cultivation in special media, stained by ordinary methods, but not by 

 Gram's method. 



IN 1868 Obermeier* first observed the presence of actively motile 

 spiral organisms in the blood of a patient suffering from relapsing 

 fever. Having made the observation, he continued to study the 

 organism until 1873, when he made his first publication. From 1873 

 until 1890 it was supposed that spirochseta rarely played any patho- 

 genic role. Millerf had, indeed, called attention to the constant 

 presence of Spirochseta dentinum in the human mouth, but it had 

 not been connected with any morbid condition. In 1890 Sacharofff 

 discovered a spirillary infection of geese in the Caucasus, caused by 

 an organism much resembling Spirochaeta obermeieri and called 

 Spirochaeta anserinum. In 1903 Marchoux and Salimbeni found 

 a third disease, fatal to chickens, caused by Spirochaeta gallinarum, 

 and found that the spread of the disease was determined by the 

 bites of a tick, Argas miniatus. In 1902 Theiler,|| in the Transvaal, 

 observed a spiral organism in a cattle plague. This has been named 

 after him by Laveran, Spirochaeta theileri. It was found to be 

 disseminated by the bites of certain ticks Rhipicephalus decolor- 

 atus. Later, what was probably the same organism, was found in 

 the blood of sheep and horses. In 1905 Nicolle and Comte** found 

 a spiral organism infecting certain bats. By this time, therefore, 

 it became evident that spirochaetal infections were fairly well dis- 

 seminated among the lower animals and that the spirochaeta were 

 of different species with different hosts and intermediate hosts. 



In 1904 Ross and Milnett an d Button and Todd|| studied a 

 peculiar African fever which they were able to refer to a spirochaeta 



*"Centralbl. f. d. med. Wissenschaft," 1873. 



f Microorganisms of the Human Mouth, Phila., 1890, p. 44 et seq. 



j"Ann. de PInst. Pasteur," 1891, xvi, No. 9, p. 564. 



Ibid., 1903, xvn, p. 569. 



|| " Jour. Comp. Path, and Therap.," 1903, XLVII, p. 55. 

 ** " Compt.-rendu de la Soc. de Biol. de Paris," July 22, 1905, LIX, p. 200. 

 ft "British Med. Jour.," Nov. 26, 1904, p. 1453. 



tj "Memoir xvn, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine," "Brit. Med. 

 Jour.," Nov. u, 1905, p. 1259. 



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