IDENTITY OF AMERICAN AND FRENCH SPOROTRICHOSIS 111 



SPOROTRICHOSIS IN FRANCE 



In France the history of this disease begins with the report 

 of a ease by de Beurmann and Gougerot in 1903. Apparently 

 they completely overlooked the work of the American in- 

 vestigators published several years earlier and thinking they 

 had discovered a new organism they submitted it to Matruchot 

 and Kamond who identified it as a sporothrix and in 1905, 

 in a note to the Biological Society of Paris, named it Sporo- 

 trichum beunnanni. A second case was observed in France 

 in 1906 by dc Beurmann and Gougerot and later they identified 

 other cases and made numerous extensive and admirable 

 studies on all phases of the disease. 1 " New cases rapidly ac- 

 cumulated in the French literature and it was soon evident 

 that the disease in that country was not rare. It was observed 

 also in the dog and the horse, the organisms being identical 

 with that from the human. It is to be noted that not until 

 1906 did the French learn of the American cases and of the 

 Sporothrix schenckii. French workers generally contend that 

 the Sporotrichum beurmanni is different from the Sporothrix 

 schenckii. 



SPOROTRICHOSIS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



In 1907 Lutz and Splendore 1 " in San Paulo in Brazil were 

 the first workers to recognize spontaneous sporotrichosis in 

 lower animals. They observed the disease in both gray and 

 white rats. They also reported five human cases from the 

 same locality. They noted that the disease in rats was 

 transmitted through bite wounds usually on the extrem- 

 ities or tail and following an initial lesion a generalized 

 infection would result. Transmission from the rat to man, 

 while probable, was not demonstrated. These studies, it 

 should be noted, were made independently, the work of Ameri- 

 can and French investigators not being known to them until 

 some time later. The organism as described by them cor- 



12 De Beurmann et Gougerot, Les SporotricJwses, Paris, 1912. 

 "Cent, fiir Bact., 45, p. 631, 1907. 



