IDENTITY OF AMERICAN AND FRENCH SPOROTRICHOSIS 123 



This and other evidence, which will be presented elsewhere, 

 make it apparent that the American sporotricha of which we 

 studied thirty-five strains have, in many respects, type char- 

 acters in common with Sporothrix beurmanni. In the light of 

 de Beurmann's and Gougerot's work, some of the American 

 strains are doubtless Sporothrix beurmanni, and it is not per- 

 missible to call such strains "Sporothrix schenckii" merely for 

 the sake of simplicity. The discussion of de Beurmann and 

 Gcaigerot (28) on this subject can now also in our opinion, be 

 satisfactorily closed, namely: that Sporothrix schenckii, Hektoen- 

 Gougerot strain, is an absolutely fixed type. The true Sporothrix 

 schenckii is represented however by all of the recently isolated 

 strains. Inasmuch as most of these strains are undoubtedly 

 identical with Sporothrix beurmanni, the Sporothrix schenckii is 

 identical with the Sporothrix beurmanni. 



The American strains of pathogenic sporotricha are therefore 

 best classified as one species. Sporothrix schenckii-beurmanni (as 

 suggested by Greco.) 



Having now completed the discussion of the several points 

 of differentiation quoted above from de Beurmann and Gouge- 

 rot, I shall next briefly consider certain other similarities of 

 the French and American strains of sporotricha that deserve 

 mention, it seems to me, in a discussion of their possible iden- 

 tity. Slight and otherwise insignificant differences between 

 organisms may be determined often by differences in serum 

 reactions in varying concentrations. In the study of this 

 group of organisms, Widal and Abrami showed that 

 positive agglutination occurred in patient's serum in dilu- 

 tions often of 1/400 or 1/500 or even higher. This has been 

 confirmed by several workers. For differential purposes they 

 noted that patients suffering with other mycelial infections 

 like actinomycosis, nocardiosos, etc., give a positive but much 

 lower agglutination. Gougerot and Caraven noted that the 

 serum of a case of hemisporosis agglutinated in dilution of 

 1/400. This was evidently exceptional. 



The writer immunized rabbits with several strains of 

 sporothrix for a period of about 8 months. The strains in- 

 cluded Sporotrichum schenckii obtained from Hektoen, Sporo- 



* Bull, et Mem. de la Soc. Med. de Hot), de Paris, 26, p. 9, 1908. 



