1922] HELLER—ANAEROBIC BACTERIA 71 
A number of descriptions of pure cultures exist, but it was the 
exceptionally studious worker who was responsible for such descrip- 
tions, and casual workers were apparently in the majority. 
In 1901 GRASSBERGER and SCHATTENFROH (18, 19) propounded 
their theory of the transmutability of anaerobic species. In the 
period following they corroborated and extended their findings, 
and their work was pushed with so many publications (16, 17, 20-23) 
and with so much assertion that by 1914 it was seriously quoted in 
at least one well known German textbook (39), and the doctrine 
was thoroughly distributed throughout Central Europe. Under 
pressure of war, work is not carefully done. The casual workers 
found it necessary to make many anaerobic diagnoses from gas 
gangrene cases, which they made rapidly, and then turned to their 
new found collections to classify them. Many of these war workers 
corroborated the general findings of GRASSBERGER and SCHATTEN- 
FROH, namely, that the characters of anaerobes are highly variable, 
and that species among these organisms are not to be seriously 
studied. 
Conrapi and BIE LING (4, 5) were the most extreme in their 
contentions, claiming that one labile species was responsible for all 
gas gangrene cases. They described two cycles, one developing on 
carbohydrate media, the other on protein media, and claimed that 
immune sera identified all the strains in each cycle, but that when 
a strain was changed over to the other cycle culturally, it was also 
changed immunologically to that cycle. Such contentions struck so 
forcibly against all conceptions of immunity that they did not long 
go unchallenged. A number of workers (12, 38) corroborated the 
transmutability findings but not the immunological ones. In fact 
KLosE (31, 32), working with highly variable impure cultures, used 
toxin formation to distinguish his strains. Some, such as ASCHOFF 
(1), who worked with slightly impure cultures, remained on the 
fence in regard to the transformations. Most assertive in their 
contentions that anaerobic organisms are highly variable in their 
reactions and are transmutable were the school of Kote (34-36), 
especially SCHLOSSBERGER (43), who suggested that the anaerobes 
may represent a single species. These workers sent cultures to — 
VON WASSERMANN (49), who declared them indistinguishable. He 
