140 ERYSIPELOID. 



a livid brown. In the skin which returned to its normal pale color, 

 slight suggillatious appeared as though some of the red blood- 

 corpuscles in the tissues had been destroyed during the progress of 

 the disease. The disease appeared to have completely subsided on 

 the eighth day, when the same smarting sensations returned, and a 

 new zone appeared around the old one, On the tenth day the area 

 measured in its transverse diameter twenty-four centimetres, and in 

 the parallel direction of the arm eighteen centimetres. After this 

 the affection disappeared permanently. During all this time the 

 general health remained unimpaired, and the temperature varied 

 from 36.8 to 37.2 C. (98.2 to 99 F.). A microscopical exami- 

 nation of the pure culture showed that it was composed of swarms 

 and heaps of irregular, round and elongated bodies larger than the 

 staphylococci. The author first believed that these bodies were 

 cocci, but later he saw a network of intertwining threads and 

 decided that they were thread-forming microbes. In old cultures, 

 the threads were very abundant and arranged in every possible way 

 and direction. These threads looked as though branches were 

 given off, but on closer examination it could be seen that no organic 

 connection existed between them. Terminal spores at the tips of 

 the threads were numerous and could not be stained. Neither the 

 microbe nor the threads manifested motile power in the culture, or 

 when suspended in water. A gelatin culture became visible on 

 the fourth day as a delicate cloud which increased in size very 

 slowly at a temperature of 20 C. (68 F.). The older cultures 

 change into a brownish-gray color, and then resemble the culture 

 of the bacilli of mice septicaemia. In cultures four months old the 

 growth was not entirely suspended. 



The author, as yet, has not given a name to this microbe, but* 

 believes that it belongs to the "cladothrix" variety of microorgan- 

 isms. He wished to ascertain the action of this microbe on lupus, 

 but in several cases in which it was tried the inoculations failed. 



