STREPTOTHRIX INFECTIONS 551 



from vegetable products, and cases have been reported 

 in which the disease has occurred after eating grains of 

 barley, etc. 



Colebrook l directs attention to the frequent presence 

 in the actinomycotic granules of numbers of minute 

 Gram-negative cocco-bacilli, which are capable of cultiva- 

 tion (B. actinomycetum comitans). No satisfactory ex- 

 planation of this association has been given. Tuberculin 

 may cause a reaction in actinomycosis, similar to that 

 which occurs in tuberculosis, and as actinomycosis fre- 

 quently simulates tuberculosis clinically, mistakes may 

 be made, and can be avoided only by a microscopical 

 examination. It is of practical importance to distinguish 

 actinomycosis from tuberculosis, for in some cases of 

 the former, both in man and in animals, potassium 

 iodide exerts a specific curative action. Vaccine treat- 

 ment has been employed with a certain amount of 

 success. 



Other forms of Actinomycosis occasionally occur in man. 

 Eppinger obtained an organism, N. asteroides (Strepto- 

 thrix Eppinger i), from a case of pseudo -tuberculosis of 

 the lungs and glands with cerebral abscess. The fungus 

 was Gram-positive and acid-, but not alcohol-, fast, grew 

 well aerobically on laboratory media and was pathogenic 

 for laboratory animals. The growths are yellowish- 

 orange to brick -red. It has been met with elsewhere, 

 and in a case of white Madura disease in the Philippines 

 (p. 554). The classical white variety of Madura disease 

 in India is an Actinomycosis (p. 553). Birt and Leishman 

 isolated an acid-fast organism, N. leishmani, pathogenic 

 to man and animals. Various saprophytic forms of 

 Nocardia, some of them chromogenic, occur in air, soil, 

 and water, and may gain access to sputum, etc. 



1 Brit. Journ. Exper. Pathol, vol. i, 1920, p. 197. 



