108 ESSENTIALS OF BACTERIOLOGY. 



ing water. Soiled clothes to fingers, fingers to the mouth, etc. ; 

 torpid catarrhal affection of the digestive tract predisposing. 

 The microbe is not found in the blood or any organ other than 

 the intestines, the tissue of the small intestines. It is also 

 found in the vomit and the intestinal contents. 



Products. " Cholera red." When chemically pure nitric or 

 sulphuric acid is added to nutrient peptone cultures of the 

 cholera bacillus a rose-red color is produced. This will riot take 

 place with other bacilli unless nitrous acid is present. The cholera 

 bacillus forms nitrites from the nitrates present in the media, 

 and also indol. The mineral acid splits the nitrites, setting free 

 nitrous acid, which, with the indol, forms the red reaction. 

 This pigment has been isolated and extracted and called 

 " cholera red." A ptomaine, identical with cadaverin, and sev- 

 eral other alkaloids have been obtained from the cultures. A 

 toxalbumen and a toxicpeptone have lately been isolated, but 

 no special actions ascribed to them. 



Bacteria Similar to the Spirillum of Cholera. 



Finkler-Prior Vibrio, or Spirillum Finkleri. 



Origin. Found in the intestinal contents of a patient suffer- 

 ing from cholera Asiatica in 1884, by Finkler and Prior, who 



thought it identical with the spi- 

 FlG - 55 ' ^ rillum of cholera ; it differs from 



& it, however, in many ways, and 

 ^ >vS'" /5 * nas been found in healthy per- 



' * 



Jfife Form. Somewhat thicker than 



^';;'oV the cholera vibrio, otherwise 



VMr"' about the same form ; it forms 



^' the long spirilla less often. Has 



Flagella. 



Spirillum Finkleri. 700 diameters. _. . ... 



(F i Q gge.) Properties. It is very motile. 



Liquefies gelatine in a short time. 



Groicth. It grows quickly at ordinary room temperature. It 

 is facultative aerobic. 



Colonies o?i Gelatine PJates. Round, finely granular colonies, 

 which in twenty-four hours are ten times as large as the cholera 

 colonies, and in forty-eight hours the whole plate is liquefied, 



