THE DYSENTERY BACILLI 439 



these media, it was found that the Kruse culture, a culture of Flexner's 

 bacillus from the Philippines, and Duval's "New Haven" culture fer- 

 mented dextrose with the production of a solid acid coagulum, but did 

 not affect mannit, maltose, saccharose, or dextrin. The culture of Hiss 

 and Russell, on the other hand, fermented not only dextrose but also 

 mannit with the production of acid and coagulation of the medium. 

 Maltose, saccharose, and dextrin were not fermented. The " Y " bacillus, 

 furthermore, wa:s shown to differ entirely from the cultures of Shiga, 

 Kruse, and " New Haven " in the serum of immunized animals. This 

 serum had for bacillus " Y " a titer of 1 : 500 while the three other above- 

 named organisms did not agglutinate in it at any dilution. In normal 

 beef serum, the Hiss-Russell organism was found to agglutinate as highly 

 at 1 : 320, while the other three cultures gave no reaction in dilutions of 

 over 1 : 10 or 20. 



Park and Carey,' in March, 1903, described an epidemic of dysen- 

 tery occurring in the town of Tuckahoe, near New York City, and 

 isolated an organism which resembled the Shiga-Kruse bacilli in not 

 fermenting mannit, but produced indol in pepton solution after five 

 days. It corresponded in agglutination with the cultures " New Haven " 

 and "Shiga" when tested in the serum of a goat immunized against 

 the mannit-fermenting culture "Baltimore," i.e., did not react at 1:50, 

 whereas Flexner's " Manila " and " Baltimore " cultures. Park and Dun- 

 ham's "Seal Harbor" culture, and some New York cultures, all fer- 

 menting mannit, agglutinated up to two thousand dilution in the " Bal- 

 timore" serum. 



The preceding review of a part of the literature, by which our knowl- 

 edge of the dysentery bacilli was developed, demonstrates sufficiently 

 that we have to deal in this group with a number of different micro- 

 organisms. This, as we have seen, was a fact first recognized by Kruse 

 when he spoke of his true dysentery and his pseudo-dysentery strains. 

 In spite of much confusion at first, the careful study of fermentation 

 phenomena, of specific agglutinations, and, more recently, by Ohno ^ 

 and others, of the bacteriolytic phenomena in immune sera, has made 

 it possible to distinguish sharply between a number of groups. 



Basing the grouping of these microorganisms upon a careful study 

 of fermentations. Hiss ' has divided them as follows : 



' Park and Carey, Jour. Med. Res., ix, 1903. 

 ' Ohno, Philippine Jour, of Sci., 1, ix., 1906. 

 'Hiss, Jour. Med. Res., N. S., viii, 1904. 



