418 BACTERIOLOGY. 



PRESENCE IN TISSUES. In patients suffering from 

 typhoid fever the organism has been found during life 

 by the application of appropriate culture methods in the 

 blood, urine, and faeces, and at autopsies in the tissues 

 of the spleen, liver, kidneys, intestinal lymphatic glands, 

 and intestines. It is not easy to demonstrate this or- 

 ganism in tissues unless it is present in large numbers. 

 The manipulations to which the sections are subjected in 

 being mounted often rob the bacilli of their stain, and 

 render them invisible, or nearly so. If, however, sec- 

 tions be stained in the carbol-fuchsin or the alkaline 

 methylene blue solution, either at the ordinary temper- 

 ature of the room or at a higher temperature (40 to 

 45 C.), then washed in absolute alcohol, and cleared in 

 xylol J and mounted in xylol balsam, the bacilli (particu- 

 larly if the tissues be the liver and spleen) can readily 

 be detected, massed together in clumps. 



In searching for the typhoid bacilli in tissues this 

 peculiar disposition in clumps must always be borne in 

 mind, otherwise much labor will be expended in vain. 

 In tissues the typhoid bacilli are not scattered about as 

 are the organisms in certain other conditions septicae- 

 mia, for instance ; they are not regularly distributed 

 along the course of the lymphatics or capillaries, but 

 appear in small masses through the organs, and it is for 

 these agglutinations that one should search. This pecu- 

 liar clumping of the typhoid bacilli in the tissues cannot 

 be satisfactorily explained, unless it be due to the specific 

 agglutinating influence that typhoid blood has upon 

 the typhoid bacillus, a phenomenon that is readily 

 demonstrable in the test-tube or under the microscope. 

 In other words, may it not be simply the result of an 



i Do not clarify with oil of cloves. It is too active as a decolorizer. 



