Cultivation 



741 



The secretion, being rich in lepra bacilli, was taken up with 

 a platinum wire and inoculated upon the culture-medium by a 

 series of linear strokes. The dishes were then sealed with paraffin 

 and kept in the incubating oven at 37°C. 



Numerous colonies, chiefly of Staphylococcus aureus and the 

 bacillus of Friedlander, developed, and in addition a number of 

 colonies, composed of slender bacilli about the size and form of 

 the lepra bacillus. 



These colonies were grayish yellow, humped in the middle, i to 



Fig. 290. — Section of one of the nodules from the patient shown in Fig. 292, 

 stained by the Weigert-Gram method to show the lepra bacilli scattered through 

 the tissue and inclosed in the large vacuolated "lepra-cells." Magnified 1000 

 diameters. 



2 mm. in diameter, irregularly rounded, and uneven at the edges. 

 They .were firm and could be entirely inverted with the platinum 

 wire, although the consistence was crumbly. They were excavated 

 on the under side. 



The colonies that formed upon agar-agar were much like those 

 described by Bordoni-Uffreduzzi, and appeared as isolated, grayish, 

 rounded flakes, thicker in the center than at the edges, and char- 

 acterized by an irregular serrated border from which a fine irregular 



