BACILLUS TETANI. 



377 



successful. He succeeded in getting it to grow in liquid blood serum, but 

 always in mixture with other organisms. Infection of animals with such a 

 culture produced the disease. These results were confirmed by Rosenbach, 

 who, though failing to obtain a pure culture, cultivated the other organisms 

 present, and inoculated them, but with negative results. He further pointed 

 out, as characteristic of the bacillus, its development of terminal spores. In 

 1889, Kitasato succeeded in isolating, from the local suppuration of mice inoc- 

 ulated from a human case, several bacilli, only one of which, when injected in 

 pure culture into animals, caused the disease, and which was now named the 

 B. tetani. This organism is the same as that observed by Nicolaier and Rosen- 

 bach. Kitasato found that the cause of earlier culture failures was the fact 

 that it could only grow in the absence of oxygen. The pathology of the 

 disease was further elucidated by Faber, who, having isolated bacterium-free 

 poisons from cultures, reproduced the symptoms of the disease. 



Bacillus Tetani. If in a case of tetanus naturally arising in 

 man there be a definite wound with pus formation or necrotic 

 change, the bacillus tetani may be recognised in film preparations 

 from the pus, 



if the charac- % 



teristic spore / 



formation has 

 occurred (Fig. -i 



126). If; how- / 



ever, the teta- 

 nus bacilli have 

 not formed 

 spores, they ap- 

 pear as some- 

 what slen- 

 der rods, with- 

 out presenting 

 any character- 

 istic features. 

 There is usu- 

 ally present in 

 such pus a 

 great variety 

 of other organ- 

 isms cocci 

 and bacilli. 



The characters of the bacillus are, therefore, best studied in cul- 

 tures. It is then seen to be a slender organism, usually about 



- 1 N' 



I 



r* 

 " 



FlG. 126. Film preparation of discharge from wound in a case 

 of tetanus, showing several tetanus bacilli of " drumstick " form. 

 (The thicker bacillus with oval and not quite terminal spore, in 

 the upper part of the field towards the right side, is not a tetanus 

 bacillus but a putrefactive anaerobe which was obtained in pure 

 culture from the wound.) Stained with gentian-violet. X 1000. 



