186 INFECTIVE DISEASES. 



Baiimgarten failed to prove any essential difference. Mitchell 

 Prudden found that Streptococcus pyogenes injected into the sub- 

 cutaneous tissue of the ears of rabbits, produced in one no effect ; 

 in four, slight transient redness ; in five, local redness followed by 

 abscess ; in twelve, well-marked erysipelatou.s redness, followed by 

 complete resolution in seven, abscess in three, and death in two. 

 Passet, Biondi, Eiselsberg, Baumgarten, and Mitchell Prudden 

 concluded that, in their morphological, biological, and pathogenic 

 characters, so far as animals are concerned, the two organisms are 

 practically identical. 



The author investigated the morphology and cultural characters 

 of the Streptococcus erysipelatis, which he had isolated from a 

 typical case. This result cleared up the conflicting statements 

 which had been made by different observers. By carrying out 

 absolutely parallel experiments, the Streptococcus pyogenes and 

 Streptococcus erysipelatis were unquestionably distinguishable, as 

 Fehleisen and Rosenbach had asserted. In both cases, however, 

 inoculation of a trace of a culture - from a solid m.edium produced 

 only transient redness. Injection hypodermically of a broth-culture 

 produced in both cases a spreading erysipelatous redness, followed 

 by suppuration. It was found that primary cultures of the two 

 micro-organisms, cultivated under precisely the same conditions, 

 differed in the size and character of their chains, in the size of the 

 individual elements, in the greater opacity of the colonies of Strepto- 

 coccus" erysipelatis, in a greater tendency to confluence, and in 

 a more rapid growth. The author found that the difference was 

 most marked in broth-cultures. Abundant flocculi were formed by 

 Streptococcus pyogenes ; a powdery deposit with special tendency to 

 form a granular adhesive film at the bottom of the culture flask, 

 in the case of the streptococcus of erysipelas. Lastly, they differed 

 in their power of resisting germicides. 



Fehleisen inoculated patients in hospital suffering with malignant 

 gi-owths, and produced a typical erysipelas with sub-cultures after 

 an incubation of from sixteen to twenty hours. The disease was 

 marked by rigors, fever, and general disturbance. Patient? who had 

 recently suffered from erysipelas had an immunity. 



Emmerich succeeded in proving the. presence of streptococci in 

 the air of a hospital where erysipelas had broken out. These cocci 

 in their form, their characters on cultivation, and their inoculation 

 results, were identified with the Streptococcus erysipelatis. It is not 

 therefore exclusively parasitic. 



Streptococci identical or agxeeing very closely in their description 



