216 ACTINOMYCOSIS HOMINIS, 



expiration of fourteen days, the growth appears more in a down- 

 ward direction than on the sides of the inoculation puncture. From 

 the tenth to the fourteenth day numerous spores are produced, and 

 a thick wall of club-shaped mycelia in typical centrifugal arrange- 

 ment. 



At a meeting of the Medical Society of Berlin, March 5, 1890 

 (Berliner Minische Wochenschrift, March 31, 1890), M. Wolf made 

 a communication in which he described culture experiments which 

 he and Israel made with actiuomyces. He announced that they 

 had succeeded in cultivating the actinomyces in and upon egg and 

 agar-agar. The inoculations were made from a case of retro-max- 

 illary actinomycosis immediately after the abscess was incised. 

 With the yellow granules, deep and superficial, inoculations were 

 made in agar-agar. It was found that the actinomyces is not an 

 anaerobic fungus, as it grew upon the surface as well as in the depth 

 of the culture soil. The agar culture appeared first as transparent 

 little drops which, by confluence, made an opaque white mass. 

 Under the microscope the culture was seen to be composed of short 

 thick rods, with an admixture of other elements. The egg cultures, 

 on the other hand, were made up of the short thick rods, besides a 

 mass of threads, some of them twisted in the shape of a corkscrew, 

 presenting an intricate network of threads. Three rabbits were 

 inoculated by implantation of the pure culture into the peritoneal 

 cavity. The post-mortem showed numerous nodules upon the pa- 

 rietal peritoneum, the omentum, and between the intestines, the size 

 of a pin's head to that of a hazelnut, surrounded by a fibrous cap- 

 sule. The interior of these nodules was composed of a yellow mass 

 the consistence of tallow. In these nodules typical actiuomyces 

 were found imbedded in masses of round cells in a state of fatty 

 degeneration. 



INOCULATION EXPERIMENTS. James Israel (" Erfolgreiche 

 Uebertragung der Aktinomykose des Menschen auf das Kanin- 

 chen," Centralblatt fur die med. Wissenschqften, 1883, No. 27) was 

 successful in inoculating a rabbit from man by introducing a mass 

 of granulation tissue into the peritoneal cavity, and Poufick pro- 

 duced the disease in calves by implantation of a portion of the 

 granulation mass into the subcutaneous tissue, the abdominal cavity, 

 or into veins. Rotter (Centralblatt /. Bakteriologie und Parasiten- 

 kunde, B. lii. No. 14, 1888) experimented on calves, pigs, dogs, 

 guinea-pigs, and rabbits, and in only one instance, a rabbit, did he 

 succeed in reproducing the disease. In this instance a piece of 

 granulation tissue, the size of a beau, was inserted into the peri- 

 toneal cavity, and the animal, having manifested no symptoms of 

 disease, was killed six months after the inoculation. On opening 

 the abdominal cavity about twenty nodules, varying in size from 



