648 Dysentery 



Musgrave* isolated what appeared to be the same organism, also 

 from cases of dysentery in the Philippines. Almost at the same 

 time Krusef was investigating an epidemic of dysentery in Germany, 

 and succeeded in isolating a bacillus that also bore fair correspond- 

 ence to that of Shiga. In 1901 SpronckJ found a bacillus in 

 cases of dysentery occurring in Utrecht, Holland, that corresponded 

 with a slightly different organism first found and described by Kruse 

 as a "pseudodysentery bacillus." 



In 1902 Park and Dunham || investigated a small epidemic of 

 dysentery in Maine, and there found a bacillus similar to those al- 

 ready described. In 1903 Hiss and Russell described a bacillus 

 " Y" from a case of fatal diarrhea in a child. 



Bacillus dysenteriae was also found by Vedder and Duval** in 

 the epidemic and sporadic dysentery of the United States. Duval 

 and Bassetttf and Martha WollsteinJt found Bacillus dysenteriae in 

 cases of the summer diarrheas of infants, especially when such diar- 

 rheas were epidemic. 



Lentz has shown that dysentery and pseudodysentery bacilli 

 present differences in their behavior toward sugars. Various ob- 

 servers found differences in the behavior of the various bacilli to 

 the agglutinating effects of artificially prepared immune serum. 

 The outcome of these investigations is the discovery that Bacillus 

 dysenteriae is a species in which there are a number of different 

 varieties well characterized, but by differences too slight to permit 

 them to be regarded as separate species. This thought that we 

 are dealing with a group of varieties and not a single well-defined 

 organism is essential to an intelligent understanding of the bacteri- 

 ology of dysentery. 



Varieties of the Dysentery Bacillus. Three varieties of the 

 dysentery bacillus may now be described: 



1. The Shiga- Kruse variety. 



2. The Flexner variety. 



3. The Hiss-Russell variety. 



The differences by which they are separated are to be found 

 in their varying agglutinability by artificially prepared immune 

 serums, each of which exerts a far more pronounced effect upon its 

 own variety than upon the others, and in the behavior toward sugars 

 with reference to acid formation and gas production. It seems not 

 improbable that the future will have much to say about the dys- 



* "Report Surg. Gen. U. S. Army," Washington, 1900. 



t "Deutsche med. Wochenschrift," 1900, xxvi. 



j"Ref. Baumgarten's Jahresberichte," 1901. . 



"Deutsche med. Wochenschrift," 1901, Nos. 23 and 24. 



I) "New York Bull, of Med. Sciences," 1902. 



** "Journal of Experimental Medicine," 1902; vol. vi, No. 2, "American Medi- 

 cine," 1902. 



tf "American Medicine," Sept. 13, 1902, vol. iv, No. 11, p. 417. 

 It "Jour. Med. Research," 1904, x, p. n. 

 "Zeitschrift f. Hygiene," etc., 1902, XLI. 



