432 THE SALMONELLA GROUP 



2. Bacillus enteritidis Aertrycke (Durham, De Nobele) vel B. suipestifer, vel B. 

 cholerce suis (Salmon) vel bacillus of hog cholera. 



3. Bacillus enteritidis Gaertner. 



This classification is unfortunately not adopted on the Continent. German 

 observers, as Bainbridge points out, regard the paratyphoid B bacillus (Schottmiiller) 

 and the aertrycke bacillus as identical species, the value of absorption tests not having 

 yet been acknowledged, and hence considerable confusion results from reading their 

 observations. The two names are retained in German publications but merely as 

 labels to indicate the source of the strain : if obtained from a human source it is 

 designated the paratyphoid B bacillus, if from animals, the hog cholera bacillus. 

 Consequently what in English nomenclature is a paratyphoid B. bacillus may in 

 German be an aertrycke bacillus, and conversely. In France the recent important 

 work of Bainbridge and O'Brien has not yet appeared in print. 



In Europe the paratyphoid B bacillus has been isolated from and accepted to be 

 the cause of two very different clinical types of disease, one indistinguishable by 

 its symptoms from enteric fever, the other characterized by the symptoms of what 

 is generally known as " food-poisoning." Whichever type the symptoms assume, 

 the disease is a septiceemic condition, and the organism can be recovered from the 

 blood during life and from the spleen after death. 



The former is by far the more common of the two types of infection, and in Europe 

 and America a very large number of cases of paratyphoid fever due to the para- 

 typhoid B bacillus have been recorded. In England it is estimated that about 

 3-6 per cent, of all cases of enteric fever are due to infection with the paratyphoid 

 B bacillus, in America about 10 per cent, and in Germany also about 10 per cent. 

 (Boycott). In South Africa paratyphoid B fever appears to be a common disease 

 (M'Naught). 



Thus in these countries paratyphoid fever is a paratyphoid B infection ; but in 

 India the disease seems almost without exception to be caused by the paratyphoid 

 A bacillus (p. 423). 



As regards symptoms of food- poisoning due to paratyphoid B the present informa- 

 tion is scanty and unreliable. In only one instance at present has the paratyphoid 

 B bacillus been proved to be present in cases of acute gastro-enteritis and that 

 instance is the outbreak recorded by Bainbridge and Dudfield. 1 



The German accounts of food-poisoning due to the paratyphoid B bacillus cannot 

 be accepted, because in Germany no distinction is. drawn between the paratyphoid 

 B. and aertrycke bacilli ; and the latter is shown by Bainbridge to be the common 

 cause of food- poisoning (p. 438). (This observer finds that all the organisms isolated 

 from clinical cases of food-poisoning in England and Germany which he has 

 examined are strains of the aertrycke bacillus.) 



Distribution of the bacillus in the body. The paratyphoid B bacillus is present in 

 the blood-stream, in the internal organs and in the intestinal contents of infected 

 persons. Apart from symptoms of paratyphoid fever and food-poisoning it has 

 been found in the gallbladder in cases of disease of the gall bladder arid in persons 

 in apparently good health : " carriers.'* Carriers in connexion with paratyphoid 

 B infections were first investigated by Lentz. Bainbridge abstracted the records 

 available and found that in the majority of cases (26 out of 29) they were of the 

 female sex, that a striking percentage (7 out of 26) had symptoms of biliary disorders, 

 and that in every case their blood agglutinated the bacillus. Paratyphoid B carriers 

 are therefore very like enteric carriers, and they may originate epidemics of para- 

 typhoid B infection (Sacquepee and Bellott, Bainbridge and Dudfield). 



Apart from cases of paratyphoid fever and persons who become " carriers," the 

 bacillus is very rarely if ever found in the human intestine or urine (Bainbridge and 

 O'Brien). No paratyphoid B bacilli were found by Morgan in summer diarrhrea, 

 by Williams, Rundle and Murray in healthy children, by Seiffert, and by Sobernheim 

 in healthy men, by Bainbridge and O'Brien in convalescents from enteric fever, or 

 by Savage in enteric fever patients (caused by the typhoid bacillus) and healthy 

 persons. 



1 Journa* of Hygiene, xi. p. 24. 



