300 MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY. 



is very frequently affected, or the disease may be present in 

 other situations about the head and neck, and may involve the 

 lungs, the intestines and the vertebrae, ribs and other bones. 

 The disease is usually locahzed, but a number of areas may be 

 affected simultaneously. 



Besides the common actinomyces, there are numerous other ray-fungi, more 

 or less closely related, and whose pathogenic properties are not fully deter- 

 mined. Generally speaking, they appear to be essentially saprophytes, which 

 occasionally become parasitic and pathogenic under especially favorable con- 



FiG. 89. — Actinomyces bovis, Smeae Prepakation from a Pure Cul- 

 ture, Stained by Gram's Method. (X 1000.) I 



ditions. A number of species have been found in air, dust, etc., some of them 

 chromogenic. Wolff and Israel described an anaerobic species, pathogenic 

 to man and animals. Madura disease, Madura foot, or mycetoma is a disease 

 occurring in India (rarely elsewhere), affecting one of the extremities, character- 

 ized by swellings, nodular deposits and abscesses. Some cases are certainly 

 due to a member of the actinomyces group.* 



Other branching organisms, some of them acid-proof, have been described 



* Compare Wright. Journal Experimental Medicine. Vol. III., p. 421. 



