352 TETANUS. 



cently, a complete mystery ; for, while certain lesions were 

 often met with, they were slight in extent, and no explanation 

 whatever could be given of their occurrence. The general 

 association of the condition with the presence of wounds, 

 suggested that some infection took place through the latter, 

 but nothing was known as to the nature of this infection. 

 Carle and Rattone in 1884 announced that they had pro- 

 duced the disease in a number of animals by inoculation with 

 material from a wound in tetanus. They thus demonstrated 

 the transmissibility of the disease. An important paper by 

 Nicolaier appeared in 1885. This author infected mice 

 and rabbits with garden earth, and found that many of them 

 developed tetanus. Suppuration occurred in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the point of inoculation, and in this pus, besides 

 other organisms, there was always present when tetanus had 

 occurred, a bacillus having certain constant microscopic 

 characters as regards size and staining reaction. Inocu- 

 lation of fresh animals with such pus reproduced the 

 disease. Nicolaier's attempts at its isolation by the ordinary 

 gelatine plate culture method were, however, unsuccessful. 

 He succeeded in getting it to grow in liquid blood 

 serum, but always in mixture with other organisms. 

 Infection of animals with such a culture produced the 

 disease. These experiments were evidently incomplete, 

 but were confirmed by Rosenbach, who produced the 

 disease in animals by inoculation, and noted the presence 

 of the same bacillus. Though he failed to obtain it in pure 

 culture, he cultivated the other organisms present, and 

 inoculated them with negative results. He further pointed 

 out, as characteristic of the bacillus, its development of 

 terminal spores. In 1889, Kitasato succeeded in isolating 

 from the local suppuration of mice inoculated from a human 

 case, several bacilli, only one of which, when injected in 

 pure culture into animals, caused the disease, and which was 

 now named the B. tetani. This organism is the same 

 as that observed by Nicolaier and Rosenbach. Kitasato 

 found that the cause of earlier culture failures was the fact 

 that it could only grow in the absence of oxygen. The 



