850 PATHOGENIC MICROORGANISMS 



bacillus described by Lustgarten 11 in 1884 seemed, for a time, to 

 have solved the mystery. The Lustgarten bacillus was an acid-fast 

 organism very similar to Bacillus tuberculosis, and found by its 

 discoverer in a large number of syphilitic lesions. The observation, 

 at first, aroused much interest and received some confirmation. 

 Later extensive investigations, however, failed to uphold the 

 etiological relationship of this bacillus to the disease but identified it 

 with the smegma bacillus, so often a saprophyte upon the mucous 

 membranes of the normal genitals. 



In 1905, Schaudinn, 12 a German zoologist, working in collabora- 

 tion with Hoffmann, investigated a number of primary syphilitic 



FIG. 90. SPIROCH^JTA PALLIDA. Smear preparation from chancre stained by the 



india-ink method. 



indurations and secondarily enlarged lymph nodes, and in both 

 lesions discovered a spirochsete similar to, but easily distinguished 

 from, the spirochaetes already known. He failed to find similar 

 microorganisms in uninfected human beings. 



The microorganism described by him as "Spirochasta pallida" 

 is an extremely delicate undulating filament measuring from four 

 to ten micra in length, with an average of seven micra, and varying 

 in thickness from an immeasurable delicacy to about 0.5 of a micron. 

 It is thus distinctly smaller and more delicate than the spirochaete 

 of relapsing fever. Examined in fresh preparations it is actively 

 motile, its movements consisting in a rotation about the long axis, 

 gliding movements backward and forward, and, occasionally, a bend- 

 ing of the whole body. Its convolutions, as counted by Schaudinn, 

 vary from three to twelve and differ from those observed in many 

 other spirochaetes by being extremely steep, or, in other words, by 



11 Lustgarten, Wien. med. Woch., xxxiv, 1884. 



"Schaudinn und Hoffmann, Arb. a. d. kais. Gesundheitsamt, 22, 1905. 



