CHAPTER III. 

 PNEUMONIA. 



Diplococcus Lanceolatus. 



The term "pneumonia," while generally understood 

 to refer to the lobar disease particularly designated as 

 croupous pneumonia, is a vague one, really comprehend- 

 ing a variety of inflammatory conditions of the lung 

 quite dissimilar in character. This being true, no one 

 should be surprised to find that a single organism cannot 

 be described as "specific" for all. Indeed, pneumonia 

 must be considered as a group of diseases, and the various 

 microbes found associated with it must be described suc- 

 cessively in connection with the peculiar phase of the 

 disease in which they occur. 



I. Lobar or Croupous Pneumonia. — The bacterium, 

 which can be demonstrated in at least 75 per cent, of the 

 cases of lobar pneumonia, which is now almost uni- 

 versally accepted as the cause of the disease, and about 

 whose specificity very few doubts can be raised, is the 

 Diplococcus lanceolatus, or pneumococcus of Frankel and 

 Weichselbaum. 



Priority of discovery in the case of the pneumococcus 

 seems to be in favor of Sternberg, 1 who as early as 1880 

 described an identical organism which he secured from 

 his saliva. Curiously enough, Pasteur 2 seems to have 

 captured the same organism, also from saliva, in the same 

 year. The researches of the observers whose names are 

 attached to the organism were not completed until five 

 years later. It is to Frankel, 3 Telamon, 4 and particularly 



1 National Board of Health Bulletin, 18S1, vol. ii. 



* Comptes rendus Acad, des Set., 1881, xcii., p. 159. 

 s Deutsche med. Wochenschrift, 1 885, 31. 



* Communication a la Sociili anatom. de Paris, Nov. 30, 1883. 



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