BACILLUS TYPHOSUS 485 



Presence in Tissues. In patients suffering from typhoid 

 fever the organism has been found during life by the appli- 

 cation of appropriate culture methods in the blood, urine, 

 and feces, and at autopsies in the tissues of the spleen, liver, 

 kidneys, intestinal lymphatic glands, and intestines. It is 

 not easy to demonstrate this organism in tissues unless it is 

 present in large numbers. The manipulations to which 

 the sections are subjected in being mounted often rob the 

 bacilli of their stain, and render them invisible, or nearly so. 

 If, however, sections be stained in the carbol-fuchsin or the 

 alkaline methylene-blue solution, either at the ordinary 

 temperature of the room or at a higher temperature '(40 to 

 45 C.), then washed in absolute alcohol, and cleared in 

 xylol 1 and mounted in xylol balsam, the bacilli (particu- 

 larly if the tissues be the liver and spleen) can readily be 

 detected, massed together in clumps. 



In searching for the typhoid bacilli in tissues this peculiar 

 disposition in clumps must always be borne in mind, other- 

 wise much labor will be expended in vain. In tissues the 

 typhoid bacilli are not scattered about as are the organ- 

 isms in certain other conditions septicemia, for instance; 

 they are not regularly distributed along the course of the 

 lymphatics or capillaries, but appear in small masses through 

 the organs, and it is for these agglutinations that one should 

 search. This peculiar clumping of the typhoid bacilli in 

 the tissues cannot be satisfactorily explained, unless it be 

 due to the specific agglutinating influence that typhoid 

 blood has upon the typhoid bacillus, a phenomenon that 

 is readily demonstrable in the test-tube or under the micro- 

 scope. In other words, may it not be simply the result of an 

 intracapillary "Widal reaction"? (See Widal Reaction.) 



1 Do not clarify with oil of cloves. It is too active as a decolorizer. 



