250 PATHOGENIC BACTERIA. 



The cocci are distributed rather sparingly in nature, 

 seeming not to find a purely saprophytic existence a 

 suitable one. They occur, however, wherever man and 

 animals have been, and can be found in the dust of 

 houses, hospitals, and especially surgical wards where 

 proper precautions are not exercised. They are common 

 upon the skin, they live in the nose, mouth, eyes, and 

 ears of man, they are nearly always beneath the finger- 

 nails, and they sometimes occur in the feces, especially 

 in children. 



The cocci are rather small, measuring about o. 7 ft in 

 diameter. When examined in a delicately-stained con- 

 dition the organisms may be seen to consist of hemi- 

 spheres separated from each other by a narrow interval. 

 The contiguous surfaces are flat, thus differing from 

 the gonococcus, whose contiguous surfaces are concave. 

 The grouping is not very characteristic. In both liquid 

 and solid culture-media the organisms either occur in 

 solid masses or are evenly distributed. It is only in the 

 organs or tissues of a diseased animal that it is possible to 

 say that a true staphylococcus grouping is present. 



The organism stains brilliantly with aqueous solu- 

 tions of the anilin dyes. In tissues it can be beautifully 

 stained by Gram's method. 



The staphylococci grow well either in the presence or 

 absence of oxygen at a temperature above 18 C, the 

 most rapid development being at about 37 C. Upon the 

 surface of gelatin plates small whitish points can be 

 observed in forty-eight hours (Fig. 52). These rapidly 

 extend to the surface and cause extensive liquefaction. 

 Hand in hand with the liquefaction is the formation of 

 an orange color, which is best observed at the centre of 

 the colony. Under the microscope the colonies appear 

 as round disks with circumscribed, smooth edges. They 

 are distinctly granular and dark-brown. When the col- 

 onies are grown upon agar-agar plates the formation of 

 the pigment is much more distinct. 



In gelatin punctures the growth occurs along the whole 

 length of the needle-track, and causes an extensive lique- 



