512 A MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY 



and its diameter is greater than the rod, and finally, at maximum 

 development, the bacillus with spore assumes a wedge shape. In 

 old cultures the organisms degenerate and the sporing rod becomes 

 a drum-stick. Serum and gelatin : not liquefied. Milk : acid 

 and occasionally clotting. Meat broth : unchanged, a little gas. 

 Most of the sugars, etc., fermented but somewhat variable. 

 Occasionally met with in gas gangrene. 



B. putrificus (coli) (Bienstock). Eeactions of this organism are 

 somewhat doubtful. Many so-called pure cultures have proved 

 to be mixtures of B. cochlearius or B. tertius with B. sporogenes. A 

 slender Gram -positive rod with oval terminal spore, like a drum- 

 stick. Gelatin and serum : liquefied. Milk : digested, with or 

 without curdling. Organism is strongly proteolytic. Non- 

 pathogenic. The B. cadaveris sporogenes of Klein may be identical 

 with this organism. In pure culture putrefaction is much delayed , 

 but in symbiosis with an aerobe (e.g. B. coli) putrefaction is 

 rapid. 1 



Septic Wounds and Gas Gangrene 



The micrococcal, streptococcal and aerobic bacillary 

 infections of wound and sepsis have already been dealt 

 with (Chapter VI, p. 267). We now have to consider the 

 anaerobic bacilli which play so large a part in dirty 

 septic war and other wounds and in gas gangrene. 



These organisms may be present as an infection in the 

 wound, giving rise to suppuration and sepsis without gas 

 gangrene, or they may induce in addition the serious com- 

 plication known as gas or emphysematous gangrene. In 

 this condition the tissues surrounding the wound become 

 infected, necrosis and gangrene result, with the presence 

 of more or less gas in the tissues, and the gangrene may 

 spread rapidly arid widely, causing a state of profound 

 sepsis. Two or three species of anaerobes may frequently 

 be present at the same time, B. tetani may also be present, 

 together with, commonly, micrococci and streptococci, 



1 Sturges and Rettger, Journ. of Bacterial., vol. iv, 1919, p. 171. 



