4S2 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE [chap. 



A vibrio was isolated by Finkler and Prior i from decom- 

 posing stools of a case of sporadic cholera, cholera nostras 

 (English cholera) ; this was done at a time when Koch's 

 discovery of the comma bacillus in Asiatic cholera was but 

 recent, and when for the first time a vibrio was isolated from 

 the human intestinal discharges. The vibrio of Finkler- 

 Prior (or Finkler comma bacillus, or Finkler vibrio, or Finkler 

 vibrio proteus) is a comma bacillus which, in many points 

 resembling the vibrio of Koch, was thought by its discoverers 

 to be causally related to cholera nostras, but this view has 

 not been supported by subsequent investigation. Frank 

 and Kartulis have missed them in all cases of sporadic 

 cholera which they investigated, and I have myself not yet 

 come across the vibrio of Finkler in the intestine of a 

 considerable number of fatal cases of sporadic or English 

 cholera which I have had the opportunity of examining 

 during 1894 and 1895. 



The points in which the Finkler-Prior vibrio resembles the 

 cholera vibrio are : (i) it liquefies gelatine, (2) and it is a 

 motile vibrio, also S-shaped forms and spirilla, but there 

 never was any difficulty in distinguishing Koch's cholera 

 vibrio from the vibrio of Finkler-Prior by the following 

 characters : the vibrio of Finkler-Prior is distinctly larger — ■ 

 longer and thicker — than the cholera vibrio, and it grows 

 incomparably faster at 20° C. in gelatine, and liquefies this 

 incomparably quicker than the cholera vibrio. Besides, the 

 colonies in the gelatine plate are always round and the 

 liquefied gelatine is uniformly turbid ; in these respects the 

 Finkler vibrio compares well with the proteus vulgaris ; in 

 the stab gelatine the vibrio of Finkler forms already after 

 forty-eight hours considerable growth and liquefaction, and 

 the liquefied gelatine is uniformly turbid ; also herein it 

 ^ Ceniralblatt fiir allg. Gesundheilspjlege, vol. i. , Nos. 5 and 6. 



