PART III. J Vegetable Organisms in Blood of Recurrent Fever. 585 



fungi which multiply by cleavage, in contradistinction to the groups which multiply 

 (I) by sprouting or (2) by germination. The fission-fungi, however, present themselves 

 in this disease in a different form from that witnessed in the preceding, anthracoid, 

 class of affections. In the latter the organisms recognisable range from the spherical 

 bacterium to the bacillus or vibrio-bacillus form, — the bacillus being by far the pre- 

 dominating form ; but in recurrent fever the representative of the schizonnycetes is a 

 spirillum — a form of the fission-fungi which, so far as I am aware, has not hitherto 

 been detected in any of the anthracoid affections referred to in the preceding pages. 



We owe the discovery of this organism in the blood to Virchow's former assistant, 

 the late Dr. Obermeier. They were found in the blood* and also in the mouth of 

 persons suffering from this form of fever, and minutely described by him in 1873.* It 

 would appear that this observer had already seen them as far back as 1868. In all 

 the cases observed by him they were present in the blood during the height of the 

 fever, but were absent during the remission or intermission, as the case might be ; nor 

 were they observed, except rarely, after the crisis. Obermeier describes them as fine 

 fibrine-like threads, equal in length to the diameter of from 1| to 6 red blood-corpuscles; 

 and manifesting screw-like, progressive movements, which may continue from one to 

 eight hours after removal from the body. The inoculative experiments which he under- 

 took, consisting of the injection of spirillum-blood of fever patients into the veins of 

 dogs, rabbits, and guinea-pigs, proved abortive, nor was there any effect produced by 

 the injection, by means of a subcutaneous syringe, of small quantities of such blood 

 into the bodies of healthy persons. 



Obermeier's observations as to the existence of the spirilla in blood in this kind 

 of fever were speedily confirmed by numerous observers, and the negative results which 

 followed his attempts at inoculating persons and animals likewise characterised the 

 attempts of several who followed in his footsteps. Motschutkowsky, however, states 

 that, although he also had failed to inoculate animals, yet he had succeeded in inoculat- 

 ing persons with the blood of patients suffering from the fever, no matter whether it 

 contained spirilla or not.f 



It was, however, soon found that whereas spirilla could generally be detected in 

 eases of fever of this kind, nevertheless cases every now and then occurred in which 

 perfectly competent observers failed to detect them in the blood from first to last, 

 and this too, in cases not a whit less severe than those in which the organisms 

 abounded and which were under the care of the same observers during the same period. 



Some discrepancy exists in the results of different observers as to the presence 

 of spirilla during apyrexia periods, as well as regards their absence during the height 

 of the paroxysm ; Birch-Hirschfeld, for example, observed them two days after the 

 crisis ; $ and Laskousky, basing his observations on thirty-two cases, says that they 



* Centralblattfii/r die medicinische Wissenschaften, No. 10, March 1873, and in subsequent numbers during 

 the same year. 



f Heydenreich : " Ueber den Parasiten dos Rlickfallstyphus," S. 38, 1877. 

 % Schmidt's JalirbUclier, Band 116, S. 211, 1875. 



