BACILLI OF THE COLON-TYPHOID-DYSENTERY GROUP 717 



suspensions of agar cultures taken up in salt solution. The statistics 

 of vaccinations done during the late war in isolated troop unit are not 

 available at the present writing. Systematic dysentery vaccination 

 was not, however, carried out in any of the European armies as far as 

 we know. The entire subject is still in its experimental stages and no 

 conclusive statements can be made regarding it. As a matter of fact, 

 judging from the immunological conditions prevailing in the disease 

 and the localization of the organisms, one would expect just what 

 Shiga found, a reduction of the mortality without any considerable 

 diminution of the morbidity. 



Serum Treatment. Sera, both monovalent and polyvalent, have 

 been made by a large number of observers and extensive attempts 

 at treatment have been carried out. Shiga himself used a mul- 

 tivalent dysentery serum in which he used the various types isolated 

 in Japan. He obtained very encouraging results in thousands of 

 cases in Japan, and believed that there was a very definite thera- 

 peutic advantage to be gained by use of the serum. Other reports 

 have been conflicting. If dysentery serum is to be of great value, 

 it probably will be most valuable in the Shiga types of the disease 

 in which an exotoxin seems definitely to occur. Sera like those 

 produced by Olitsky and Kligler have not yet been used with suffi- 

 cient extensiveness to warrant final judgment. 



THE MORGAN BACILLI 



In 1905 and 1906 Morgan 46 made a systematic study of the 

 bacteriology of diarrheal diseases in infancy. He made a large 

 number of isolations from stools of such children, and, among other 

 things, isolated from a number of cases types of Gram-negative 

 bacilli, obviously belonging into the paratyphoid-dysentery group 

 which, however, did not correspond exactly with species previously 

 described. 



Morgan's bacillus I, he isolated from twenty-eight cases of infant 

 diarrhea, out of fifty-eight examinations, and in seventeen of these 

 it was the only lactose non-fermenting organism present. This 

 organism, was motile, produced acid and gas on glucose, but did 

 not ferment mannite, dulcite, lactose and saccharose. It differed 

 from the hog cholera bacillus in producing an alkalin reaction on 



46 Morgan, H. de #., Brit. Med. Jour., 1, 1906, 908. 



