32 DAVID J. DAVIS 



bacilli in 18 out of 25 cases of pertussis, upon the conjunctiva in three out of nine cases 

 of measles, once in the heart's blood in measles postmortem, once in scarlet fever and 

 once in a case of urethritis. So far as I have been able to determine, there are no 

 reports in the literature upon the occurrence of influenza bacilli in normal throats. 



To sum up the literature, the results agree very well with the 

 data given in Table 2, so far as they are comparable. Siisswein's 

 results in measles and Lord's results in bronchitis correspond very 

 closely with those in the table. The findings in influenza agree in 

 general with those obtained by many investigators, especially the 

 French. I do not know of any positive findings in the literature of 

 influenza bacilli in the nose or throats of cases of epidemic meningitis. 

 All the results taken together indicate that we have in these bacilli 

 an organism occurring very commonly in a large number of diseases, 

 and undoubtedly present, at times at least, in all inflammatory con- 

 ditions of the respiratory passages whatever their character may be. 

 The evidence is conclusive that this organism at times exists as a 

 saprophyte, as indicated by its appearance in normal throats, and 

 that it is also capable of causing inflammatory changes, as shown 

 both by human and by animal experiments, and by the vast amount 

 of pathologic data. The all-important question is, whether we are 

 dealing in all these various conditions with the same organism, 

 varying only in its degree of virulence, or whether we have to do here 

 with a group of very closely related organisms. Morphologically, 

 tinctorially, and culturally, from the results obtained from the various 

 strains isolated in the cases here reported, and in the cases reported 

 in the literature, we must conclude that we have no means of dis- 

 tinguishing them. Reasoning from analogy, we should expect a 

 group, as occurs with so many of the other bacteria; and the chief 

 problem now before us is the careful application of every possible 

 means, particularly in the way of biological experiments, to differ- 

 entiate the organisms. Already considerable evidence from this 

 point of view exists, but it is conflicting. Wollstein's experiments 

 upon agglutination with the organisms from influenza and pertussis 

 are extremely important and suggestive. They are in accord with 

 results obtained by Cantani 1 with the influenza bacillus, but are 

 opposed, directly or indirectly, to the results obtained by several 

 investigators (Neisser, Smit, Lord, Jehle, Meunier). 



1 Ztschr. f. Hyg., 1903, 42, p. 505. 



