CHAPTER IX. 



QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS continued. " 



The Bacillus Enteritidis Sporogenes. 



Ix October 1895, on the occasion of an epidemic outbreak of 

 diarrhoea amongst patients of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 

 Klein isolated an anaerobic spore-bearing bacillus B. enteritidis 

 sporogenes which when injected subcutaneously into guinea- 

 pigs, caused acute fatal disease with sanguineous exudation. 

 Andrewes discovered the same bacillus in the milk supplied to 

 the patients and in the bowel discharges of severe cases of 

 diarrhoea ; he did not find it, however, in the " evacuations of 

 casual commonplace diarrhoea." Klein also stated in his first 

 report that the spores of the microbe could not be found in 

 the intestinal evacuations of healthy individuals. Later 

 investigations showed that the B. enteritidis sporogenes has a 

 wide distribution in nature, being found in the evacuations of 

 cases of diarrhoea, in sewage, water, soil, dust polluted with 

 sewage, and in horses 1 dung. Klein now states that most 

 specimens of sewage contain on an average about 500 to 

 600 spores of this organism per cubic centimetre. The 

 B. enteritidis sporogenes is an anaerobic organism, and can 

 be best isolated by Klein's method, which is as follows : 



" A small portion of any material suspected to contain the 

 organism is placed in a test-tube containing 15 c.c. of recently 

 sterilised milk ; this is heated to 80 C. for ten to fifteen minutes, 

 and then cooled. The milk-tube is next placed in a large 

 cylindrical test-tube (Buchners cylinder) containing about 120 

 grains of pyrogallic acid, about 10 c.c. of strong liquor 

 potassae are added, and the Buchner test-tube closed as 

 quickly as possible with a well-fitting india-rubber stopper, 

 which is then sealed with melted paraffin. The whole 



