Cultivation 765 



Cultivation. Many endeavors have been made to culti- 

 vate this bacillus upon artificially prepared media, but in 

 1903 Hansen,* who discovered the organism, declares that 

 no one had yet cultivated it. 



Bordoni-Uffredozzif was able to cultivate a bacillus which 

 partook of the staining peculiarities of the lepra bacillus as 

 it appears in the tissues, but differed in morphology. 



CzaplewskiJ confirmed the work of Bordoni-Uffredozzi, 

 and described a bacillus supposed to be the lepra bacillus, 

 which he 'succeeded in cultivating from the nasal secretions 

 of a leper. 



The bacillus was isolated upon a culture-medium consist- 

 ing of glycerinized serum without the addition of salt, 

 peptone, or sugar. The mixture was poured into Petri 

 dishes, coagulated by heat, and sterilized by the inter- 

 mittent method. 



The secretion, being rich in lepra bacilli, was taken up with 

 a platinum wire and inoculated upon the culture-medium 

 by a series of linear strokes. The dishes were then sealed 

 with paraffin and kept in the incubating oven at 37 C. 



Numerous colonies, chiefly of Staphylococcus pyogenes 

 aureus and the bacillus of Friedlander, developed, and in 

 addition a number of strange colonies, composed of slender 

 bacilli about the size and form of the lepra bacillus. 



These colonies were grayish yellow, humped in the middle, 

 i to 2 mm. in diameter, irregularly rounded, and uneven at 

 the edges. They were firm and could be entirely inverted 

 with the platinum wire, although the consistence was 

 crumbly. They were excavated on the under side. 



The colonies that form upon agar-agar are much like those 

 described by Bordoni-Uffredozzi, and appear as isolated, 

 grayish, rounded flakes, thicker in the center than at the 

 edges, and characterized by an irregular serrated border 

 from which a fine irregular network extends upon the 

 medium. These projections consist of bundles of the bacilli. 



When a transfer was made from one of these colonies 

 to fresh media, the growth became apparent in a few days 



* Kolle and Wassermann's "Handbuch der pathogenen Mikroorgan- 

 ismen," n, p. 184, 1903. 



t "Zeitschrift f. Hygiene," etc., 1884, in. 



t "Centralbl. f. Bakt. und Parasitenk.," Jan. 31, 1898, vol. xxm, Nos. 

 3 and 4, p. 97. 



