THE CHOLERA SPIRILLUM AND ALLIED VARIETIES 405 



and differ in the number of terminal flagella or in other characteristics. 

 Cunningham found a number of such spirilla in cases of apparently 

 true cholera in India. Some of these may have been true cholera 

 spirilla and others may have had some relationship to the disease in 

 the person from which they were derived. 



Spirillum of Finkler and Prior. 



Because of their prominence in literature and their frequent use in 

 teaching, the spirillum of Finkler and Prior, that of Metchnikoff, and 

 that of Deneke are of considerable interest. 



Finkler and Prior, in 1884, obtained from the feces of patients with 

 cholera nostras, after allowing the dejecta to stand for some days, a 

 spirillum which is of interest mainly because it simulates the comma 

 bacillus of Koch, but differs from it in several cultural peculiarities. 



FIG. 125 



Spirillum or Finkler and Prior, x 1100 diameters. 



Morphology. Somewhat longer and thicker than the spirillum of 

 Asiatic cholera and not so uniform in diameter, the central portion 

 being usually wider than the pointed ends. 



Biology. An aerobic and facultative anaerobic, liquefying spirillum. 

 Does not form spores. Upon gelatin plates small, white, punctiform 

 colonies are developed at the end of twenty-four hours. These are 

 round, but less coarsely granular, darker in color, and with a more 

 sharply defined border than the comma bacillus. Liquefaction of 

 the gelatin around these colonies progresses rapidly, and at the 

 end of forty-eight hours is usually complete in plates where they are 

 numerous. In gelatin-stick cultures liquefaction progresses much more 

 rapidly than in similar cultures of the cholera spirillum, and a stocking- 

 shaped pouch of liquefied gelatin, already seen after forty-eight hours, 

 is filled with a cloudy liquid. The liquefaction increases, and in twenty- 

 four hours more reaches the sides of the tube in the upper part of the 

 medium; by the end of the week the gelatin is usually completely lique- 

 fied. Upon the surface of the liquefied medium a whitish film is seen. 



