CHOLERA VIBRIO 511 



ninety-three days after recovery, suggesting that these carriers might 

 be of hygienic concern for months after recovery. Zlatorgoroff 1 and 

 others have made similar observations. Even healthy individuals 

 who are in contact with cholera patients may have cholera organisms 

 in their feces without symptoms. It must be remembered in this 

 connection, however, that curved bacilli morphologically like cholera 

 organisms, but not giving specific serum reactions, are not uncommon 

 in the feces of healthy people. Generally speaking, cholera carriers 

 are somewhat less likely to occur than typhoid carriers. 



Isolation of Cholera from Water. The simplest method of isolating 

 cholera vibrios from water is to prepare a sterile stock solution con- 

 taining 10 per cent, of peptone and 5 per cent, of salt; to every 

 100 c.c. of water to be examined 10 c.c. of this stock solution are 

 added, which practically converts the suspected water into a culture 

 medium. The isolation then is carried out by the Schottelius method 

 described above. The initial culture being the water itself, succes- 

 sively inoculating Dunham's tubes from the surface growth obtained 

 in the water culture after it has been incubated at 37 C. for forty- 

 eight hours, and finally making agglutination tests with a high potency 

 serum for the final agglutination of the organisms is almost invariably 

 successful. 



Vibrio of Finkler and Prior (Vibrio Proteus). The organism was 

 first isolated and described by Finkler and Prior. 2 . It was obtained 

 from the dejecta of a case of acute enteritis and subsequently isolated 

 from the dejecta of patients having cholera nostras. 



Synonyms. Vibrio Proteus. Perhaps identical with Miller's vibrio 

 found in carious teeth in 1884. 3 



Morphology. Very much like the cholera vibrio except that the 

 organism is somewhat larger, exhibits a greater degree of curvature, 

 and is said to have slightly pointed ends. The organism occurs singly 

 and in pairs, rarely in long spirals. Involution forms, however, are 

 very common. There is a single polar flagellum, and the organism 

 is actively motile. It stains readily with the ordinary anilin dyes and 

 is Gram-negative. 



Isolation and Culture. The organism liquefies gelatin with great 

 rapidity, otherwise there is nothing characteristic about the growth 

 in gelatin. 



1 Centralbl. f. Bakt., 1911, Iviii, 14. 



2 Deutsch. med. Wchnschr., 1884, x, 632-657. 



3 Miller, Mikroorganismen d. Mundhohle. 



