1891.] MICllOSCOriCAL JOURNAL. 261 



BACTERIOLOGY. 



Bacteriology of Yellow Fever. — Domiiigo-Freire has described 

 tlie Cryptococcus xantoffcnhis^ which is round and has a diameter of 

 one-thousandth of a millimetre. This micro-organism is only found in 

 the tropics. Qiiite often the cryptococcus is arranged in little chains. 

 In cultures it gives rise to yellow and black pigments. The former is 

 soluble, and stains the skin of patients with yellow fever ; the latter 

 gives color to the vomited matter. When the blood of yellow-fever 

 patients or a culture of the microbes is injected into guinea-pigs, yel- 

 low fever is produced. The ptomaines only produce certain symptoms. 

 Transplantation attenuates the cultures, and it is possible to protect the 

 human system from the malady. Inoculation produces a group of phe- 

 nomena similar to those of the invasion of yellow fever. In forty- 

 eight hours the symptoms have disappeared. Sometimes icterus is 

 produced. Domingo-Freire has made a large number of inoculations. 

 The average mortality of inoculated subjects is four-tenths of one per 

 cent. — V Union yl/f?V., vSept. 5, 1S91. Abstracted in The Satellite. 



The Klebs-Loeffler Bacillus. — It will be remembered that in 

 manv cases of disease diagnosticated as diphtheria, Frudden foiled t(; 

 find the characteristic Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, while European observ- 

 ers, as a rule, find it. The reason assigned for this discrepancy of re- 

 sults is that iVmerican physicians often confound diphtheria with sim- 

 ple anginas. Welch and Abbot, of Johns Hopkins, examining eight 

 cases of uncomplicated diphtheria, found the bacillus in every case. 

 They consider that "the endless controversy as to whether diphtheria 

 is primarily a local or a general disease is settled in favor of the doc- 

 trine that it is primarily local, and that the grave constitutional symp- 

 toms are the result of intoxication with poisonous products, formed by 

 the local action of the bacilli." 



The Bacillus of Syphilis. — Marschalk(') read a paper on this sub- 

 ject at a meeting of the Medical Society of Buda-Festh, April 11, 1891. 

 The author has discovered a method much simpler than that of Lust- 

 garten, by which the presence of bacilli may be detected in sections of 

 syphilitic tissue. The method is as follows : Stain in concentrated so- 

 lution of methylin blue several hours; wash in distilled water; stain 

 for one to five minutes in concentrated aqueous solution of vesuvin. — 

 Satellite., Oct.., i8gi. 



A New Bacillus. — Du Casal and Vilard, of the Institut Pasteur, 

 report upon a new bacillary disease. The matter is of considerable in- 

 terest, sinpe the disease may be, and probably has been, confounded 

 with tuberculosis, the abdominal lesions being somewhat simih.r. In 

 the case reported, however, the course of the disease was much more 

 rapid than that of tuberculosis. The bacillus has been isolated. It 

 has the form of short, mobile rods, single, combined in pairs, or in 

 chains. Inoculations were without effect upon guinea-pigs, but cul- 

 tures were pathogenic to rabbits and mice. — Public Healths Sept.., 

 j8gi. 



Food of Bacteria. — Among the advantages of filtering water, it is 

 to be remembered that, even if filtration does not actually diminish the 

 number of germs in the water, it removes a large proportion of the 

 organic matter on which the germs depend for food. 



