CHAPTER IV. 

 YELLOW FEVER. 



THE bacteriology of yellow fever has been studied by 

 Domingos Freire, Carmona y Valle, Sternberg, Havel- 

 burg, and most recently by Sanarelli. 



Sternberg, whose work is extensive and important, 

 says: " Facts relating to the endemic and epidemic prev- 

 alence of yellow fever, considered in connection with 

 the present state of knowledge concerning the etiology 

 of other infectious diseases, justify the belief that yellow 

 fever is due to a living organism capable of development 

 under favorable local and meteorological conditions ex- 

 ternal to the human body, and of establishing new cen- 

 ters of infection when transported to distant localities." 



Sternberg, at the Tenth International Medical Con- 

 gress (Berlin, 1890), reported the study of 42 yellow fever 

 autopsies in which aerobic and anaerobic cultures were 

 made from the blood, liver, kidney, urine, stomach, and 

 intestines, but the specific infectious agent was not found, 

 and the most approved bacteriological methods failed to 

 demonstrate the constant presence of any particular 

 micro-organism in the blood and tissues of yellow fever 

 cadavers. The micro-organism most frequently encoun- 

 tered was the Bacillus coli communis. 



A few scattered bacilli were found in the liver and 

 other organs at the moment of death, but when a portion 

 of liver was preserved in an antiseptic wrapper and kept 

 for twenty-four to forty-eight hours the large number of 

 bacteria that developed were of many varieties, the most 

 common being the Bacillus coli communis and the Ba- 

 cillus cadaveris. 



The blood, urine, and crushed liver-tissue obtained 



