Staphylococcus Pyogenes Aureus et Albus 313 



and evaporation of the medium they sink down into shallow ex- 

 cavations after a few days have passed. 



Thermal Death Point. — Staphylococci are usually quite suscep- 

 tible to the effect of heat, though their resistance is not uniform. 

 Sternberg found them destroyed by an exposure to 62°C. for ten 

 minutes, and to 8o°C. for one and a half minutes, but three cultures 

 studied by von Lingelsheim were not killed by an exposure to 6o°C. 

 for an hour, and one culture studied by him endured an exposure 

 to 8o°C. for ten minutes. 



Vital Resistance. — The staphylococci resist drying well and re- 

 main alive upon paper or cloth for as long as two or three 

 months. Daylight has no injurious effect; direct sunlight can 

 be endured for an unusually long time. In antiseptic solutions 

 they show no unusual resisting power and are killed in about 

 fifteen minutes by r : 1000 mercuric chlorid or 5. per cent, phenol 

 solution. 



Metabolic Products.— Staphylococci can make use of free or 

 combined oxygen, hence are aerobic or anaerobic. In liberating 

 combined oxygen, no gas is generated in any culture -medium. They 

 produce ferments by which gelatin is Hqiiefied, milk coagulated and 

 digested, blood-serum digested and slowly liquefied. Indol, phenol 

 skatol and trimethylamine result from the protein transformations, 

 according to Emmering.* The indol can easily be detected in Dun- 

 ham's peptone medium. A yellow pigment is produced. Nitrates 

 are reduced to nitrites in cultures kept for three days at 37°C. 

 Staphylococci are capable of producing fatty acids from sugars, 

 hence acidity develops in media containing dextrose, saccharose, 

 lactose, maltose, mannite and glycerin. No gas is evolved from the 

 fermentation of the sugars. The acids most commonly produced 

 are acetic, valerianic, butyric and propionic. 



Wells and Cooperi; have found small quantities of lipolytic ferment 

 in agar-agar cultures. KrausJ first showed a hemolytic ferment in 

 the cultures. 



Toxic Products.; — ^Leber seems to have first conceived of suppura- 

 tion as a toxic process depending upon the soluble products of 

 parasitic fungi, and in 1888, through the action of alcohol upon 

 staphylococci, prepared an acicular crystalline body soluble in 

 alcohol and ether, but sHghtly soluble in water, to which he gave 

 the name phlogosin. 



Mannatti found that pus has substantially the same toxic prop- 

 erties as sterilized cultures of the staphylococcus; that repeated in- 

 jections of sterilized pus induce chronic intoxication and marasmus; 

 that injection of sterilized pus imder the skin causes a grave form of 

 poisoning; and that the symptoms and pathologic lesions caused by 



* "Berliner deutsche chemische Gesselschaft," 1896, p. 2721. 

 t "Jour. Inf. Diseases," 1912, xi, 388. 

 t "Wiener Klin. Wochenschrift," 1900, m. 



