LEPROSY 83 



prodigious numbers. It may be necessary to examine for long periods 

 of time, smears made .from tuberculosis lesions of skin before rinding a 

 single organism. 2. Leprosy bacilli have not been cultivated with 

 absolute certainty 3. Injected into guinea-pigs, they do not produce 

 lesions. 



There have been many reports of positive findings with the Wassermann test in cases 

 of tubercular leprosy but such reports are considered doubtful by many. Butler, 

 in the Philippines, has found that the lepers gave no higher percentage of positive 

 Wassermann reactions than did the nonleprous native patients at his clinic. 



Recently a leprosy-like disease of rats has been reported in which there are two 

 types: i. A skin affection and 2. a glandular one. In this disease, acid-fast 

 bacilli, alike in all respects to leprosy bacilli, have been found. Deanehas obtained 

 a diphtheroid-like organism in culture, which is nonacid-fast. This same finding 

 has been obtained in cultures considered positive in human leprosy. 



Quite recently it has been claimed that the leprosy bacillus has been 

 cultivated by excising aseptically the subcutaneous portion of lepromata 

 and dropping the leprous tissue into salt solution, the resulting growth 

 being like a streptothrix. This was the basis of the Nastin treatment 

 which is now more or less discredited. In 1909 Clegg reported that by 

 smearing plates containing amoebae with spleen pulp of lepers (in which 

 the bacilli were abundant) he obtained growth of an acid-fast bacillus. 

 He was able to carry on these organisms in subculture for several genera- 

 tions. A vaccine made from these bacilli does not seem to have been 

 successful. 



Duval states that he has cultivated the lepra bacillus on Novy-Mac- 

 Neal media to which i% glycerine had been added. He states that 

 white mice can be inoculated and a pure culture obtained from the 

 peritoneal cavity. According to Duval it grows best at 32 to 35 C. 

 and is not killed by a temperature of 60 C. It is most easily obtained 

 by injecting white mice intraperitoneally with material from leprous 

 tissues. 



Bayon considers the cultures of Duval and Clegg as not shown to 

 have characteristics which would separate them from the saprophytic 

 group of acid-fast organisms. He thinks that Kedrowsky's nonacid- 

 fast diphtheroid is one stage in the typical acid-fast leprosy bacillus. 

 He states that sera of lepers showed the complement fixation test with 

 antigen made from cultures isolated by himself as well as with the Ke- 

 drowsky culture, which tests were negative with Duval's culture. 



For diagnosis we should use both smears from the nasal mucus and 



