﻿TREPONEMA PERTENUIS CASTELLANI OF YAWS. 449 



i 

 However, some writers, particularly Novy and Knapp(24), have con- 

 sidered it possible that division of Treponema may be by transverse 

 fission, and type M, which is very rare, would seem to be an example. 

 In this type we see what looks like one organism but it shows a break 

 in its continuity. More than one break rarely occurs. Whether these 

 apparent breaks are really such, or are merely artefacts, we do not know. 

 They usually appear like the latter. We have seen the appearance indi- 

 cated both in stained preparations and in photomicrographs, but not in 

 wet specimens. 



VIABILITY. 



We have found treponema which showed slight motion and preserved 

 their forms in a capillary tube preparation of serum made thirty-four 

 days prior to the time of its examination; apparently the organisms 

 were alive but we made no inoculations with them. The bacteria, which 

 had been very numerous in other preparations made at the time, but not 

 kept so long, had so far as we could see all died, leaving a pure culture 

 of Treponema pertenuis. 



Undoubted motion is preserved by organisms in tube preparations for 

 a period of several days, although it is always sluggish after a few hours 

 and often after one hour or less. 



CULTIVATION. 



At the suggestion of Dr. Miyajima we studied capillary tube prepara- 

 tions of the serum from yaws lesions, in the hope of obtaining aggluti- 

 nation of the treponema, as Dr. Miyajima said that he had obtained it 

 in similar preparations from chancres. Our hopes in that direction 

 were speedly realized, as we obtained marked clumping in the first one 

 we made. These tubes were examined on the second, third and fourth 

 clays. 



We have not since had an opportunity to discuss the matter with Dr. 

 Miyajima, and therefore are not quite sure as to what he meant by the 

 term "agglutination." If he used it as meaning merely the aggregation 

 of already existing organisms into clumps, we think that his statement 

 was not sufficiently broad, as it is our opinion that the numbers of 

 treponema in such preparations are greatly increased after one clay to a 

 week. 



Usually, the increase is manifest within 24 hours; however, at times, 

 it takes place more slowly and may only become well marked after several 

 days. The increase in numbers and the clumping are both almost, but 

 not quite, constant; of the two increase is, in our opinion, the more so. 

 We obtained a similar result in one of the two cases of syphilis in which 

 we made the same experiment with serum from the chancre. 



It is difficult to determine accurately whether a smear preparation 



