CHAPTER XXXV. 

 BLASTOMYCOSIS. 



BLASTOMYCES DERMATITIDIS (GILCHRIST AND STOKES). 



THE first case in Which yeasts or blastomycetes were defi- 

 nitely connected with disease seems to have been published by 

 Busse.* He observed a case of tibial abscess in a woman 

 thirty-one years of age, who died about a year after coming 

 under observation. Postmortem examination showed num- 

 bers of broken-down nodular formations upon the bones, and 

 in the spleen, kidneys, and lungs. In all of these lesions he 

 found, and from them he cultivated, an yeast, which, when in- 

 troduced in pure culture into animals mice and rats 

 proved infective for them. He called the organism Sac- 

 charomyces hominis, and the affection in which it was found 

 "Saccharomycosis hominis." 



In May, 1904, three months before the appearance of 

 Busse's paper, Gilchrist exhibited to the American Dermato- 

 logical Association in Washington microscopic sections from 

 a case of cutaneous disease in which peculiar bodies, recognized 

 as plant forms, were found. After the appearance of Busse's 

 papers, Gilchrist f more fully described and illustrated his 

 findings, calling the lesions " blastomycetic dermatitis." 

 Though much work upon pathogenic blastomycetes has been 

 published and pathogenic forms of these micro-organisms 

 have been described by Sanfelice,J by Rabinowitsch, and 

 others, the chief and almost the sole form in which these 

 infections make their appearance is a dermal infection known 

 as "blastomycetic dermatitis." 



The infection usually begins with the formation of a papule 

 upon the face or one of the extremities, which suppurates and 

 evacuates minute quantities of viscid pus. The lesion crusts 



* "Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk.," 1894, xvi, 175. 

 f "Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports," I, 269, 291. 

 t "Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk.," 1895, xvn, 113, 625; xvm, 521; 

 xx, 219. 



"Zeitschrift fur Hygiene," etc., 1896, xxi, n. 



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