THE GAS BACILLUS 87 



velop. From day to day smell the culture, and if an odor similar to the 

 penetrating, sour, foul smell of the stools of a man who has been on a 

 debauch be detected, it is suspicious. The nondevelopment of a foul 

 odor is against tetanus. Also make smears from the material and ex- 

 amine for drum-stick spores. If these are found, heat the material 

 to 8oC. for one-half hour, to kill nonsporing aerobes and faculative 

 anaerobes, and then inoculate a deep glucose agar tube and cultivate 

 by Wright's method. The fusiform lateral outgrowth about the middle 

 of the stab is characteristic. 



A more rapid method is to draw up the material, provided it be pus (tissue scrap- 

 ings may be emulsified in sterile salt solution) into a capillary bulb pipette. Then 

 seal off the end and heat the capillary bulb pipette and its contents in a water-bath 

 at 8oC. for fifteen minutes. Next break off the sealed tip and stick the pipette into a 

 deep tube of glucose agar. When the point reaches the bottom, force out the material 

 along the line of the stab as the pipette is withdrawn. Cover the surface of the 

 agar with sterile liquid petrolatum and incubate. Better anaerobic conditions 

 obtain where the Buchner or Wright method is employed. 



Tetanus produces no gas. Material for examination is best obtained with a bulb 

 pipette (containing a little sterile salt solution) which is plunged into the agar and the 

 salt solution forced out and drawn in where a proper growth is noted. 



Spores form in thirty-six to forty-eight hours. In injecting test animals it is 

 advisable to divide the material to be injected into two portions; one animal is 

 injected with the material alone, the second animal with tetanus antitoxin at the 

 same time the material is injected. Only the first animal dies with tetanic symptoms. 



B. Aerogenes Capsulatus (Welch, 1891). This bacillus is apparently 

 widely distributed. It is possibly the same organism as Klein's B. 

 enteritidis sporogenes, which is constantly present in faeces. It is a 

 large capsulated organism, which does not form chains. Spores are 

 produced on blood-serum. These are frequently absent on other 

 media. It is questioned whether its pathogenicity is other than ex- 

 ceedingly feeble, the presence of the bacillus in emphysematous find- 

 ings at postmortem being attributed to terminal or cadaveric invasion. 



Cases, however, in the Philippines, have been reported following carabao horn 

 wounds, in which most serious and fatal results attended emphysematous lesions 

 showing this bacillus. The isolation of a Gram-positive bacillus from a lacerated 

 wound discharge, even in the absence of emphysema, is almost diagnostic. 



In milk cultures we have coagulation and from the subsequent development 

 of gas the disruption of the coagulum into shreds. An odor of butyric acid is 

 developed. 



Cultures in litmus milk show these shreds plastered against the sides of the tube 

 and showing a pink color. 



It is the cause of "foamy organs" occasionally present at autopsy. 



