34 ; THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Feb 
er at the ends than at the centre, so as.to resemble a dumb-. 
bell or diplococeus. The bacilli sometimes appear vacu- — 
olated and in old cultures show a variety of involution- 
forms. Kitasato has compared the bacillus to that of 
chicken cholera. In his studies of plague, Ogata states 
that while Kitasato found the bacillus which he had de- 
scribed, in the blood of cadavers, Yersin seldom found his 
bacillus in the blood, but always in the enlarged lymphat- 
icglands. Kitasato’s bacillus retains the color when stain- 
ed by Gram’s method ; Yersin’s does not. Kitasato’s ba- 
cillus is motile; Yersin’s, non-motile. The colonies of © 
Kitasato’s bacillus when grown upon agar are round, ir- 
regular, grayish-white with a bluish tint, and resemble 
glass-wool when slightly magnified; Yersin’s bacillus 
forms white, transparent colonies with iridescent edges. 
Ogata, in the investigation of the cases that came into his 
hands, found a bacillus that resembled that of Yersin, but 
not that of Kitasato, and it is certain that the description 
of Yersin is the more correct of the two. 
In the Japan Times, 1899, Kitasato explains that his 
investigations being” made upon cadavers that were part- 
ly putrefied, he was led to believe that the bacillus first 
invaded the blood. Later studies upon living subjects, 
showed him the error of this view and the correctness of 
Yersin’s observation that the bacilli first multiply in the 
lymphatics. The studies of Kitasato and Yersin show 
that in blood drawn from the finger tips and in the soft- 
ened contents of the glands, the bacillus may be demon- 
strable. When cultures are made from the blood or soft- 
ened contents of the buboes, the bacillus may be obtain- 
ed in pure culture, and is found to develop upon artifi- 
cial culture-media. In bouillon, a diffuse cloudiness re- 
sults from the growth, as observed by Kitasato, though 
in Yersin’s observations the culture more nearly resem-~ 
bled erysipeles cocci, and contained zooglea attached to 
the sides and at the bottom of the tube of nearly clear 
