CHAPTER XXXV 



BACILLUS DIPHTHERIA, BACILLUS HOFFMANNI, AND BACILLUS 



XEROSIS 



BACILLUS DIPHTHERIA 



SINCE 1821, when Bretonneau of Tours published his observa- 

 tions, diphtheria has been an accurately recognized clinical entity. 

 Our knowledge of the disease in the sense of modern bacteriology, 

 however, begins with the first description of Bacillus diphtheria by 

 Klebs in 1883. Klebs x had observed in the pseudomembranes from 

 diphtheritic throats, bacilli which in the light of more recent knowledge 

 we can hardly fail to recognize as the true diphtheria organism. His 

 work, however, was purely morphological and, therefore, inconclusive. 

 One year after this announcement, Loeffler 2 isolated and cultivated an 

 organism which corresponded in its morphological characters to the one 

 described by Klebs. He obtained it from thirteen clinically unques- 

 tioned cases of diphtheria, and, by inoculating it upon the injured mucous 

 surfaces of animals, succeeded- in producing lesions which resembled 

 closely the false membranes of the human disease. His failure to find 

 the bacillus in all the cases he examined, his finding it, in one instance, 

 in a normal throat, and his inability to explain to his own satisfaction 

 some of the systemic manifestations of the infection which we now 

 know to be due to the toxin, caused him to frame his conclusions in 

 a tone of the utmost conservatism. The second and third publications 

 of Loeffler, 3 however, arid the inquiry into the nature of the toxins 

 produced by the bacillus, published in 1888 by Roux and Yersin, 4 

 eliminated all remaining doubt as to the etiological relationship existing 

 between this organism and the disease. 



Innumerable observations, both clinical and bacteriological, by 

 other workers, have, since that time, confirmed the early investigations, 



1 Klebs, Verb. d. 2. Kongr. f. inn. Medizin, Wiesbaden, 1883. 



2 Loeffler, Mittheil. a. d. kais. Gesundheitsamt, 1884. 



3 Loeffler, Cent. f. Bakt., 1887 and 1890. 



. Roux and Yersin, Ann. de Pinst. Pasteur, 1888 and 1889. 

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