458 A MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY 



the crescentic bodies is a zone of radially arranged elements, many 

 of which are fan-shaped owing to branching ; they are indistinct, 

 as they do not stain with the gentian violet, but they are very 

 suggestive of the club-shaped structures present in actinomycosis, 

 and they resemble the Actinomycosis hominis inasmuch as they do 

 not stain by Gram's method (Plate XVIII. 6). By staining with 

 haematoxylin and orange rubin, or with the Ehrlich-Biondi triple 

 stain, here and there in the radial zone well-defined clubs can be 

 demonstrated. It seems, therefore, that the radial zone is composed 

 of degenerate club-shaped structures, and the disease evidently 



FIG. 51. A foot affected with madura disease. (White variety.) 



closely resembles actinomycosis, but seems to be due to a different 

 species of streptothrix. 



From a case of the white variety 1 Boyce cultivated a streptothrix 

 which differed somewhat from the Actinomyces, as it grew slower, 

 produced no pigment, and on agar formed white raised colonies 

 with radial grooves, not unlike the tiny barnacles found on wooden 

 piles in the sea. Vincent 2 also isolated a streptothrix, perhaps 

 identical with that of Boyce, which differed from the Actinomyces 

 in growing feebly in broth, in not liquefying gelatin, and in not 

 being inoculable in the rabbit. He describes it as forming on 

 glycerin agar umbilicated colonies, first white and afterwards red. 

 Shattock 3 suggests that the red, cayenne -pepper-like grains occa- 

 sionally met with in mycetoma may be due to colonies of the strepto- 



1 Hygienische Rundschau, 1894, No. 12. 



2 Ann. de VInst. Pasteur, 1893. 



3 Trans. Path. Soc. Lond., vol. xlix, 1898, p. 294. 



