12 



And then Ogata as well as Yamagiwa, in another publication, 

 shows that they found the Yersin bacillus as the cause of the 

 plague in the Formosa epidemic. Scheube equally opposes Kita- 

 sato's claim and says : 



The bacillus discovered simultaneously and at the same place by Kitasato 

 is not the true plague bacillus (discovered by Yersin), because it shows 

 marked points of difference, it is motile, etc. 



It is a somewhat ludicrous misfortune which befalls Scheube 

 in his polemical remarks against Kitasato, that he himself con- 

 fuses some of the differentiating characters of Yersin's and Kita- 

 sato's first descriptions. Scheube makes it appear as if Kitasato 

 at first erroneously stated that the plague bacillus does not and 

 that Yersin's bacillus does retain Gram's stain. The opposite, 

 of course, is true. Yersin correctly, in his first report, stated that 

 the plague bacillus loses Gram's stain. 



On the other hand, Cantlie, of the Indian Medical Service, at 

 a plague conference and discussion held in London in 1898 observed 

 that the names of Kitasato and Yersin were usually associated, 

 and the bacillus was commonly termed the Kitasato-Yersin bacil- 

 lus. Kitasato, however, had demonstrated the bacillus a week 

 previous to Yersin, and although he (Cantlie) felt the greatest 

 respect for the work of Yersin on plague, yet the latter had no 

 claim as an independent discoverer of the bacillus, since that 

 distinction belonged to Kitasato alone. (Brit. Med. Jour., 1898, 

 Vol. II, Sept. 24, p. 963.) 



However, anyone who reads the reports of Yamagiwa and Ogata 

 regarding the epidemic in Formosa, which contain literal trans- 

 lations from Kitasato's first publications in Japanese, can not 

 fail to conclude that it was indeed Yersin and not Kitasato who 

 had first worked with pure cultures of the plague bacillus. Kita- 

 sato's first reports show clearly that what he described as pure 

 cultures of the plague bacillus were not such. On the other hand, 

 there can be no reasonable doubt that Kitasato saw and recognized 

 plague bacilli shortly before Yersin. No bacteriologist examining 

 the juice of buboes in certain stages, either from the living or 

 from the post-mortem table, can overlook the enormous number 

 of characteristic bacilli. However, it was undoubtedly Yersin who 

 first isolated and described what was really a pure culture of the 

 plague bacillus. 



