SACCHAROMYCETES 



551 



tionship to cancer. Sanfelice 1 and others have cultivated organisms 

 closely resembling Blastomycetes from cancerous tissue and have 

 attempted to harmonize the appearance of the yeasts with certain 

 inclusion bodies within cancer cells.' The consensus of opinion at the 

 present time is wholly against this hypothesis. 



Certain varieties of yeast are definitely known to incite disease in 

 man and animals. Busse 2 isolated a yeast which he called Saccharo- 

 myces hominis from a fatal infection in a woman which began in a 

 tibial abscess and somewhat later Gilchrist 3 reported a case of blasto- 

 mycetic dermatitis in man. Since that time numerous similar cases 

 have been recorded, a majority of them around Chicago. 4 The causa- 

 tive organism (Blastomyces), has been variously grouped with the 

 yeasts and with the oidia. It is usually referred to as a yeast. 



FIG. 89. Blastomyces section of lung. 



Morphology. Blastomycetes, as found in the tissues, are ovoid 

 or spherical cells measuring from 3 to 30 microns in diameter, the 

 smaller dimension being the more common. Mycelial and hyphaeal 

 forms are found in cultures, but they are rarely met with in the tissues. 

 The mycelial filaments measure from 5 to 10 microns in diameter. 

 The cells usually occur in groups of fifteen or twenty or even more, 

 but occasionally single organisms are met with. The variation in 

 size within large groups of Blastomyces is usually very considerable. 

 A thick membrane or capsule is frequently found around mature 

 cells within the tissues of the body, but ascospores have not been 

 definitely demonstrated. The Blastomyces stain with ordinary 



1 Centralbl. f. Bakt., Orig., 1902, xxxi, 254. 



3 Johns Hopkins Hosp. Rep., 1896, i, 296. 



4 See Arch. Int. Med., 1914, xiii, No. 4, for Case Reports. 



2 Ibid., 1894, xvi, 175. 



