RELAPSING FEVER. 415 



of the living bacilli, and obtained a serum which had 

 more powerful properties. This anti-plague serum has 

 been employed by Yersin in cases of the disease at Canton, 

 Amoy, and, more recently, Bombay. The reports of the 

 results obtained are of a distinctly favourable character, 

 though not yet sufficiently extensive to supply an accurate 

 estimate of the efficacy of this mode of treatment. 



RELAPSING FEVER. 



At a comparatively early date, namely in 1873, when 

 practically nothing was known with regard to the production 

 of disease by bacteria, 

 a highly characteristic 

 organism was dis- 

 covered in the blood 

 of patients suffering \ 

 from relapsing fever. J 

 This discovery was 

 made by Obermeier, 

 and the organism is 

 usually known as the 

 spirillum or spirachcete 

 Obermeieri, or the 

 spirillum of relapsing 

 fever. He described 

 its microscopical 



rharsrrprs anrl fonnH FlG- IO1 - s P irill a of relapsing fever in 

 acierb, <mu lounu human blood Film pre paration. (After 



that its presence in Koch.) x about 1000. 

 the blood had a 



definite relation to the time of the fever, the organism 

 rapidly disappearing about the time of the crisis, and 

 reappearing when a relapse occurred. He failed to find such 

 an organism in any other disease. His observations were 

 fully confirmed, and his views as to its causal relationship 

 to the disease were generally accepted. Later, the disease 

 was produced in the human subject by inoculations with 



