TYPHUS FEVER, TRENCH FEVER, ETC. 941 



Ricketts and Wilder saw short bacilli in smear preparations, but were not 

 able to cultivate them. Rabinovitch 13 described a Gram-positive diplo-bacillus, 

 cultivated from cases of an epidemic in Kieff, and with antigens prepared 

 from this organism, he obtained complement-fixation and agglutination. 

 Fiirth studied an epidemic in China and obtained short, plump rods which 

 grew aerobically in short chains. P. Th. Muller saw a diplo-bacillus upon 

 which he did not lay much stress etiologically, and Prowezek described inclu- 

 sions in leucocytes which he regarded as protozoa. It is hardly worth while 

 at the present time to describe in detail the many different findings that 

 have been reported, since in few of them is there sufficient evidence to enable 

 us to come to conclusions. 



In 1914 Plotz 14 described a short Gram-positive bacillus which he obtained 

 by anaerobic cultivation, with considerable regularity, from cases of Brill's 

 disease at the Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York, and which since then has been 

 made the subject of considerable study by Plotz, Olitsky, and Baehr. 15 They 

 have obtained the bacillus again and again, have succeeded in obtaining 

 positive agglutinations and complement-fixation in the blood of endemic 

 typhus cases after the crisis and have obtained a similar bacillus from a 

 number of European typhus cases which have come into quarantine. 



The method of cultivation by which this bacillus is grown is relatively 

 simple, consisting of taking blood directly from a vein into high tubes 

 containing glucose agar and unheated and unfiltered ascitic fluid of a specific 

 gravity not less than 10.15. 



The American Red Cross Commission which went to Siberia during the 

 last typhus epidemic and of which the writer was a member attempted 

 to work along the lines laid down by Plotz but found it extremely difficult 

 to do systematic work and obtain reliable materials under the conditions 

 then existing. The undersigned obtained an organism very similar to the 

 Plotz bacillus by Plotz's method in two cases. In the first of these the 

 organism could not be carried further than the second generation, and in 

 the second it did not reach America alive. Hopkins obtained a similar 

 organism later toward the end of the epidemic. However, these organisms 

 were found so rarely that we were forced to the conclusion that these isolated 

 findings, though pointing somewhat in favor of Plotz's organism, did not 

 establish proof. 



Petruschky 16 has recently cultivated a similar but aerobic bacillus from 

 sputum in typhus cases and Arnheim 17 has aerobically cultivated an organism 

 which in appearance and staining properties is not unlike the Plotz bacillus. 



13 EaUnovitch, Centralbk. Bakt. Orig., 1909, lii, Arch, f. Hyg., 1909. 



14 Plotz, Jour, of A. M. A., Ixii, 20, p. 14. 



15 Plots, Olitsky and Baehr, Jour, of Inf. Dis., xvii, 1915, p. 1. 



16 Petruschky, Centralbk. f. Bakt., Ixxv, 1915, p. 497. 

 "Arnheim, D. Med. Woch., 36, 1916, p. 1060. 



