CHAPTER XII. 



ERYSIPELAS. 



HISTORY. The contagiousness of erysipelas has been recognized 

 for centuries, and on this account early attempts were made to 

 include it among microbic diseases. 



jSTepveau (Virchow u. Hirsch's Jahresbericht, 1872, 1, p. 254) 

 found micrococci in the blood of erysipelatous patients, and these 

 were present in greatest number in blood taken from the diseased 

 part. 



Wilde (Med. Jahrb., B. civ., Heft 1, S. 104) from his own inves- 

 tigations was able to corroborate these observations, but he also 

 ascertained that the pus of wounds from which erysipelatous 

 inflammation starts contains the same micrococci. 



Orth (Archiv f. Exp. Pathol u. PharmakoL, B. i. S. 81) found 

 micrococci in the contents of the bullae of erysipelas. Reckling- 

 hausen and Lukomsky (Virchow's Archiv, B. Ix. S. 418) found 

 micrococci in the lymphatic vessels and the connective-tissue spaces 

 in the structures affected by the virus of erysipelas. 



Billroth and Ehrlich (Langenbeck's Archiv, B. xx. S. 418) found 

 micrococci not only in the lymphatic vessels, but also in the blood- 

 vessels of the inflamed skin. 



Tillmanns (Deutsche, med. Wochenschrift, 1878, No. 17) found 

 them in the skin, and Letzerich (Virchow u. Hirsch's Jahresb., 

 1875, p. 69) in cases of erysipelas attacking vaccination-wounds, 

 in the wound itself, in the bloodvessels, muscles, liver, spleen, and 

 kidneys. Koch (Investigations into the .Etiology of Traumatic Infec- 

 tive Diseases, London, 1880) described the specific organism of 

 erysipelas as a small micrococcus of globular shape, united in pairs 

 or forming short chains, and published photographic representa- 

 tions of them in his work, in which he also describes erysipelas in 

 rabbits which he produced artificially by the injection, into the 

 subcutaneous tissue of the ear, of mouse's dung softened in distilled 

 water. 



Fehleisen (Die Aetiologie des Erysipels, Berlin, 1883) was the 

 first who, in 1883, discovered the essential cause of erysipelas and 

 succeeded in cultivating the microbes on a number of nutrient 

 media. From the appearance of the microbe and its direct etio- 

 logical bearings to erysipelas, he called it the streptococcus of ery- 



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