760 Tuberculosis 



THE BUTTER BACILLUS. 



Petri,* Rabinovitsch, | and KornJ have described, as 

 Bacillus butyricus, an acid-fast organism morphologically 

 like the tubercle bacillus, which may at times be found in 

 butter. Its chief importance lies in the confusion that may 

 arise through mistaking it for the tubercle bacillus where 

 attention is paid to the morphologic and tinctorial characters 

 only, as tubercle bacilli may be found in butter made from 

 cream from the milk of tuberculous cattle. 



Isolation and cultivation of these organisms is easy, and 

 more than any other measure serves to differentiate them 

 from the tubercle bacillus, as they grow upon nearly all the 

 culture-media with rapidity and luxuriance. 



PSEUDOTUBERCULOSIS. 

 BACILLUS PSEUDOTUBERCULOSIS. 



Pfeiffer, Malassez and Vignal,|| Eberth,** Chantemesse,tt 

 Charrin, and Roger it have all reported cases of so-called 

 pseudotuberculosis occurring in guinea-pigs, and character- 

 ized by the formation of cellular nodules in the liver and 

 kidneys much resembling miliary tubercles. Cultures made 

 from them showed the presence of a small motile bacillus 

 which could easily be stained by ordinary methods. When 

 introduced subcutaneously into guinea-pigs, the original dis- 

 ease was reproduced. 



Morphology and Cultivation. Bacillus pseudotuber- 

 culosis is characterized by Pfeiffer as follows : The organism is 

 rod-shaped, the rods varying in length (0.4 to 1.2 {i} and 

 sometimes united in chains. They may be almost round, 

 and then resemble diplococci. They stain by ordinary 

 methods, but not by Gram's method. They are motile and 

 have flagella like the typhoid and colon bacilli. They form 



* "Arbeiten aus dem Kaiselichen Gesundheitsamt," 1897. 



t "Zeitschrift fur Hygiene," etc., 1897. 



t "Centralbl. f. Bakt." etc., 1899. 



\ "Bacillare tuberculose, u. s. w.," Leipzig, 1889. 



j| "Archiv. de Physiol. norm, et Path.," 1883 and 1884. 

 ** "Virchow's Archiv," Bd. en. 

 ft ''Ann. de 1'Inst. Pasteur," 1887. 

 tJ "Compte-rendu de 1'Acad. des Sci.," Paris, t. cvi. 



