Bacillus Histolyticus 



503 



The filtrate of an initial culture of this soil in a meat mash 

 medium in the constricted tube 1 contained also the toxin of B. 

 botulinus Type A, and it was during our effort to recover this 

 organism that the Bacillus histolyticus was isolated. 



The primary culture contained numerous obligately aerobic 

 hay bacilli and it is interesting to note that while our usual use 2 

 of gentian violet easily eliminated these by selective bacterios- 

 tasis, it was impossible in six trials to eliminate a certain faculta- 

 tive aerobe-anaerobe which we now consider to have been none 

 other than the B. histolyticus since that was the only organism 

 that could be isolated from the subsequent deep agar colonies. 



The isolated culture corresponds in all of its morphologic cul- 

 tural, and pathogenic properties to the war wound strains re- 

 ceived from Dr. Weinberg of the Pasteur Institute of Paris or 

 indirectly from Dr. Kahn of Cornell University Medical School. 



248 (2208) 



The failure of fermentation reactions with bacillus histolyticus. 



By IVAN C. HALL. 



[From the Department of Bacteriology and Experimental Path- 

 ology, University of California, Berkeley, California.] 



I wish at this time to correct a mis-statement regarding the 

 fermentative power of B. histolyticus that appeared in my 1922 

 paper, 3 in which I recorded acid and gas production in glucose, 

 and uncritically accepted the records of Henry 4 and the British 

 Medical Research Committee 5 of fermentation of glucose, levu- 

 lose and maltose, which were based, like my own, on the study 

 of a single strain. My own result may have been due to an un- 

 detected contamination. At any rate, Weinberg and Seguin 0 , 



1 Hall and Peterson, Jour, of Bacteriology (in press). 



2 Hall, Jour. Am. Med. Assn., 1919, Ixxii, 274. 



3 Hall, Jour. Inf. Dis., 1922, xxx, p. 445. 



4 Henry, Jour. Path, and Bact., 1917, xxi, 344. 



5 British Medical Research Committee, Report No. 39, 1919. 



6 Weinberg et Seguin, La Gangrene Gazeuse, Masson et Cie, Paris, 1917. 



