NON-SPORING BACILLI 237 



B. Enteritidis (Gaertner). In 1888 the flesh of a 

 diseased cow was sold for food in a Saxony village. Gastro- 

 enteritis followed the ingestion of the meat in the case of 

 fifty-seven people. One young man ate 800 grm. (nearly 

 2 lb.) of the raw meat, and died in thirty-five hours. 

 From his spleen and blood Gaertner isolated an actively 

 motile bacillus, closely resembling the typhoid germ ; 

 and he obtained the same organism from the flesh of the 

 cow. Similar bacilli have since been found in other 

 outbreaks of meat-poisoning. Gaertner's bacillus is very 

 pathogenic to laboratory animals, causing an intense 

 hemorrhagic enteritis. The symptoms are due to endo- 

 toxins which are heat resisting, so that boiling does not 

 readily destroy the toxicity. It grows more rapidly on 

 gelatin than B. typhosus ; forms no indol, but ferments 

 dextrose, with formation of acid and gas. Closely related 

 to the bacillus of Gaertner are the hog cholera bacillus 

 and the B. psittacosis. The latter was first isolated 

 in Paris in 1892 in a highly fatal pneumonia-like illness 

 (49 cases, 16 deaths), which was traced to sick parrots 

 from South America. B. icteroides and B. typhi 

 murium are also of this group. Danysz's virus is 

 supposed to consist of B. enteritidis (iErtryck and 

 Gaertner) . 



B. Dysenteriae, or Shiga's bacillus. First isolated 

 from the stools of patients (in Japan) suffering from acute 

 dysentery, in which no amoeba could be found. The 

 bacillus was found by examining the stools for an organism 

 which would agglutinate with the serum of the patients. 

 In 36 cases one and the same organism was found to meet 

 the test, and it was not found in the dejections of healthy 

 persons or persons suffering from other diseases, nor did 

 it agglutinate with their blood serum. It is now recognized 

 as the specific cause of acute epidemic dysentery of 

 temperate climates. Since then, several bacilli have been 

 isolated in different parts of the world, all related to Shiga's 

 bacillus but giving a variety of reactions to carbohydrates 

 and to immune serum. Kruse isolated his organism from 

 " pseudo-dysentery of the insane," and Flexner from dysen- 

 tery in the Philippines. They all ferment dextrose but 

 without gas formation. In milk, first slight acidity and 



