544 Typhoid Fever 



Piorkowski* recommends a culture medium composed of urine two 

 days old, to which 0.5 per cent, of peptone and 3.3 per cent, of gelatin 

 have been added. Colonies of the typhoid bacillus appear radiated and 

 filamentous ; those of the colon bacillus, round, yellowish, and sharply 

 denned at the edges. The cultures should be kept at 22 C., and the 

 colonies should appear in twenty-four hours. 



Adami and Chapinf have suggested what seems to be a 

 promising method for the isolation of typhoid bacilli from 

 water, making use of the agglutination of the bacilli by 

 immune serum. Two quart bottles (Winchester quarts) 

 are carefully sterilized and filled with the suspected water 

 with an addition of 25 c.c. of nutrient broth and incubated 

 for eighteen to twenty-four hours at 37 C. By this time 

 the typhoid bacillus grows abundantly in spite of the small 

 amount of nourishment the water contains. At the end of 

 the incubation, 10 c.c. of the fluid is filled into each of a 

 number of long narrow (7 mm.) test-tubes made by sealing 

 a glass tube one-half meter long at one end. About one inch 

 from the bottom the tube is filed completely round so as to 

 break easily at that point. The different tubes next receive 

 additions of typhoid immune serum sufficient to make the 

 dilutions i : 60, i : TOO, i 1150, and i : 200. If typhoid 

 bacilli are present, within a quarter of an hour beginning 

 agglutination can be seen, and by the end of two to five hours 

 flocculent masses collect at the bottom of the tube, forming 

 a flocculent precipitate. The next procedure should be 

 with the tube showing agglutination with the greatest dilu- 

 tion, as the more concentrated preparations carry down not 

 only the typhoid bacilli, but also closely related organisms. 

 After the sedimentation of the agglutinated bacilli is com- 

 plete, the tube is broken at the file mark, and the sediment 

 contained in the short tube washed with two or three changes 

 of distilled water, being allowed to settle each time. This 

 removes many of the organisms not agglutinated. A loop- 

 ful of the washed sediment is transferred to a tube of nutrient 

 broth, and finally from this tube plate cultures are made upon 

 Eisner's or Hiss's media. 



A culture medium for isolating the typhoid bacillus from 

 feces is recommended by Drigalski-Conradi { and by Petko- 

 witsch. It is made as follows: 



* "Berliner klin. Wochenschrift," Feb. 13, 1899. 



t "Journal of Medical Research," May, 1904, vol. xi, No. 2, p. 469. 



J " Zeitschrift f. Hygiene," Bd. xxix. 



"Centralbl. f. Bakt., etc," May 28, 1904, Bd. xxxvi, No. 2, p. 304. 



