TEXT-BOOK OF BACTERIOLOGY. 333 



doubt, and was attributed to diverse agents, such as extraordinary 

 conditions of the weather, colds, and other more or less incompre- 

 hensible influences. 



Carle and Rattone, and afterward especially Rosenbach, showed 

 that tetanus was transmissible from man to animals, and hence of 

 infectious nature. Other investigators noticed the fact that, by 

 inoculating small quantities of garden-mould, especially on white 

 mice, often a morbid picture was produced which strikingly resem- 

 bled the one observed in experimental tetanus. Nicolaier was able 

 to prove in such cases the regular presence of a peculiar " bristle- 

 shaped" rod, with round spore-heads at the ends. The same 

 structures were found again in tetanus naturally developed, and 

 it was but natural to suppose that we had to deal here with 

 originally similar objects. The conclusive proof of the correctness 

 of this supposition, as well as further information regarding the 

 presumed exciter of tetanus, were frustrated by the circumstance 

 that artificial pure cultures were produced with considerable diffi- 

 culty, and hence a more accurate investigation of the vital properties 

 of this kind of bacterium was impossible. 



The micro-organism was doubtless strictly anaerobic and ap- 

 peared always in company with other bacilli likewise anaerobic, 

 from which it could not be diEferentiated in spite of all caution, so 

 that a kind of symbiosis was sei'iously thought of. 



By means of skilful manipulation of our culture procedure, 

 Kitasato has recently succeeded in proving that the micro-organism 

 hitherto claimed as tetanus bacillus can be isolated from its com- 

 panions and grown by itself. Kitasato placed a small piece of tis- 

 sue from a man dying of tetanus, and from the immediate neigh- 

 borhood of the suppurated wound, upon the usual media and observed 

 that a luxuriant development of divers bacteria took place in the 

 incubator, but that the species forming end-spores proceeded very 

 rapidly to sporulation, while the other species approached it only 

 some time afterward. Before they did so, Kitasato heated his 

 mixed cultures to 80° C. All bacilli not having sporulated were 

 destroj'ed ; these latter however, withstood the manipulation suc- 

 cessfully so that he was enabled to obtain further pure cultures 

 without difficulty and to remove, finally, by transmission to animals, 

 every doubt of the existence of a genuine tetanus bacillus. 



The germs of the tetanus bacillus seem to be very widely diffused 

 in nature. It is known that they are found in garden-mould; they 

 have also been met with in ruined Avails, in putrefying fluids, as 

 well as in manure. With regard to the last fact it must be stated 

 that French investigators, above all Verneuil, think that tetanus 



